THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 



'im 




ArBREV Beakdsi.ky 

From the Fliotograph hy Frederick H. F^aits 



THE ^^ 

EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

A REVIEW OF ART AND IDEAS AT THE 

CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH 

CENTURY 

BY 

HOLBROOK JACKSON 

M 
AUTHOR OV "ROMANCE AND KKALITV," ETC 




NEW YORK 
ALFRED A. KNOPF 






(pV 



X 







Printed in Great Britain by the Riverside Press Limited 
Edinburgh 



TO 

MAX BEERBOHM 




Design by Aubrey Beardsley for the Contents Page of The Savoy, \o\. I. 



CONTENTS 



INTRODUCTION . 

CHAl'TBR 

I. FIN DE SlicLE 1890-1900 

II. PERSONALITIES AND TENDENCIES 

III. THE DECADENCE 

IV. OSCAR WILDE : THE LAST PHASE 
V. AUBREY BEARDSLEY 

VI. THE NEW DANDYISM . 
VII. THE INCOMPARABLE MAX 
VIII. SHOCKING AS A FINE ART 
IX. PURPLE PATCHES AND FINE PHRASES 
X. THE DISCOVERY OF THE CELT . 
XI. THE MINOR POET 
XII. FRANCIS THOMPSON 

XIII. JOHN DAVIDSON 

XIV. ENTER — G.B.S. . 
XV. THE HIGHER DRAMA 

XVI. THE NEW FICTION 
XVII. RUDYARD KIPLING 
XVIII. ART AND LIFE . 
XIX. THE REVIVAL OF PRINTING 
XX. BRITISH IMPRESSIONISTS 
XXI. IN BLACK AND WHITE 

INDEX .... 



13 
17 

33 
55 
72 
91 
105 
117 
126 
135 
147 
157 
166 
177 
193 
205 
216 
231 
244 
255 
267 
279 
293 




Reproduced by kind permission of the proprietors of " Punch " 

Britannia a la Beardsley 

By our " Yellow " Decadent 

(E. T. Reed) 



LIST OF PLATES 



Aubrey Beardsley .... 

From a Photograph by Frederick H. Evans 

Cover Design of The Yellow Book, Volume I 

By Aubrey Beardsley 



Frontispiece 

TO FACE PAOE 

18 



Cover Design of The Saturday Review, Christmas Supple- 
ment (1896) .... 
By William Rothenslein 

Cover Design of The Savoy ^ Volume I 
By Aubrey Beardsley 

Oscar Wilde (1895) .... 

Aubrey Beardsley .... 

By Max Beerbohtn 

The Rape of the Lock 

By Aubrey Beardsley 

Page Decoration from the Morte d' Arthur . 
By Aubrey Beardsley 

Tail-piece from Salome 
By Aubrey Beardsley 

" Mr W. B. Yeats introducing Mr George Moore to the 
Queen of the Fairies" 

By Max Beerbohm 

A, E. Housman .... 

From a Drawing by William Kothenstein 

Francis Thompson (Life Mask, 1905) 

Rudyard Kipling .... 

By William Nicholson 

A Garland for May Day 1895 
By Walter Crane 



.S4' 

38 

72 
92^ 

98 

100 

104 

120 
164 

166 

232 

244 



10 LIST OF PLATES 

TO FACB PAOa 

Page Decoration from the Kelmseott Coleridge . , 258 

By William Morris 

Page Decoration from John Gray's Spiritual Poems . 262 

Bjf Charles Ricketts 

Frontispiece and Title-P;ige of The House of Joy . 266 

By Laurence Hoiisman 

The Peacock Fan . . . . . .268 

By Charles Conder 

The Arrival of Prince Charming .... 274 
By Charles Conder 

A Voluptuary ...... 280 

By L. Raven Hill 

Illustration from The Faerie Qiieene .... 282 
By Waller Crane 

Phil May ....... 286 

By Spy 

A Lecture in Store . . . . . .288 

By Phil May 

The Banks of the Styx . . . . .290 

By S. H. Sime 



PREFACE 

This new edition of " The Eighteen Nineties " has been 
revised and corrected. Here and there notes and sentences 
have been added for purposes of clarity. In all other re- 
spects it resembles the 1913 edition. Through the courtesy 
of the Proprietors of " Punch " it has been possible to add 
to the illustrations Mr E. T. Reed's admirable caricature, 

^'Britannia a la Beardsley." 

H J. 

London, 1922 



II 



INTRODUCTION 

There is little to say by way of introduction to this study, 
as the title, I imagine, explains the subject, with the possible 
exception that it does not, for reasons of space, indicate that 
I have reviewed only certain tendencies in art and ideas in 
this country. I have had, of course, to refer, incidentally, 
to the work of foreign writers and painters, but only as part 
of the process of tracing origins and lines of development. 
This is said not as excuse but in explanation of omissions 
which might otherwise be questioned. The movement which 
I have described in the British Islands was, to be sure, but 
one phase of a literary and artistic awakening which had 
its counterparts in many countries, particularly in France 
and Germany, and to some extent in Italy and Russia. Mr 
Arthur Symons, in the Symbolist Movement in Literaturey 
has given us a valuable interpretation of one of its important 
phases in France, and Mr W. G, Blaikie Murdoch, in The 
Renaissance of the Nineties, has dealt eloquently, but all too 
briefly, with certain manifestations of the awakening in our 
own country, whilst Mr J. M. Kennedy in English Literature, 
1880-1905, has made the literary history of the quarter 
century he reviews the basis of an argument in defence of 
the classical as against the romantic idea. My intention has 
been to co-ordinate the various movements of the period, 
and avoiding sectional or specialised argument, to interpret 
them not only in relation to one another, but in relation to 
their foreign influences and the main trend of our national 
art and life. Thus my aim may be described as interpreta- 
tive rather than critical, although criticism is not easily 
avoided by one who engages to select examples and instances 
from a great body of work. 

No excuse need be made by me for confining my review 
to so limited a period as the last decade of the nineteenth 

13 



14 INTRODUCTION 

century, for once having decided to write about the art and 
ideas of the closing years of that century, the final ten years 
insisted upon definite recognition by the coincidence of 
position in time and appropriate happenings in literature, 
painting, and other arts and crafts. But, as a matter of 
fact, I have not confined myself strictly to a single decade, 
for it will be seen that my Nineties trespass upon the adjoin- 
ing territory of the Eighties and the Nineteen Hundreds, 
and, to protect myself as far as possible against extraneous 
argument, I have adopted in the initial chapter the dates 
" 1890-1900 " as a kind of symbol for the period. The com- 
promise is defensible, as I have not wilfully singled out a 
decade for review ; that decade had singled itself out, the 
Eighteen Nineties having already become a distinctive epoch 
in the minds of those who concern themselves with art and 
ideas. 

Anybody who studies the moods and thoughts of the 
Eighteen Nineties cannot fail to observe their central char- 
acteristic in a widespread concern for the correct — that is, 
the most effective, the most powerful, the most righteous — 
mode of living. For myself, however, the awakening of the 
Nineties does not appear to be the realisation of a purpose, 
but the realisation of a possibility. Life aroused curiosity. 
People became enthusiastic about the way it should be used. 
And in proof of sincerity there were opinionated battles — 
most of them inconclusive. But they were not wasteful on 
that account, for the very circumstance of idea pitting itself 
against idea, vision against vision, mood against mood, 
and, indeed, whim against whim, cleared the way for more 
definite action when the time ripened. It was an epoch of 
experiment, with some achievement and some remorse. The 
former is to be seen in certain lasting works of art and in 
the acceptance of new, and sometimes revolutionary, social 
ideas ; the latter in the repentant attitude of so many poets 
and other artists of the time who, after tasting more life than 
was good for them, reluctantly sought peace in an escape 
from material concerns. The decade began with a dash for 
life and ended with a retreat — but not defeat. It was the 



INTRODUCTION 15 

old battle between heterodoxy and orthodoxy, materialist 
and mystic, Christian and Pagan, but fought from a great 
variety of positions. Arthur Symons summed up the situa- 
tion very effectively in the conclusion to Studies in Prose and 
Verse, where he discusses the conversion of Huysmans. 
"He 'has reaUsed," Mr Symons wrote, "the great choice 
between the world and something which is not the visible 
world, but out of which the visible world has been made, does 
not lie in the mere contrast of the subtler and grosser senses. 
He has come to reaUse what the choice really is, and he has 
chosen. Yet the choice is not quite so narrow as Barbey 
D'Aurevilly thought ; perhaps it is a choice between actual- 
ising this dream or actualising that dream. In his escape 
from the world, one man chooses religion, and seems to find 
himself ; another choosing love may seem also to find him- 
self ; and may not another, coming to art as to a religion 
and as to a woman, seem to find himself not less effectively ? 
The one certainty is that society is the enemy of man, and 
that formal art is the enemy of the artist. We shall not find 
ourselves in drawing-rooms or in museums. A man who 
goes through a day without some fine emotion has wasted his 
day, whatever he has gained by it. And it is so easy to go 
through day after day, busily and agreeably, without ever 
really living for a single instant. Art begins when a man 
wishes to immortalise the most vivid moment he has ever 
lived. Life has already, to one not an artist, become art in 
that moment. And the making of one's life into art is after 
all the first duty and privilege of every man. It is to escape 
from material reality into whatever form of ecstasy is our 
own form of spiritual existence." There we have the atti- 
tude of the Eighteen Nineties from which most pilgrimages 
into life began. In the following pages I have endeavoured 
to expound the attitude and to indicate its victories and 

Finally, I have to thank all those who have so willingly 
given me their aid by permitting me to quote from their works 
and to use the illustrations written and pictorial which add 
so much to the grace and value of this book. Particularly 



1^ INTRODUCTION 

I must thank Mr John Lane for permission to use the 
following designs by Aubrey Beardsley :-" The Rape of the 
r rr^. Tf/rP'^"^^ ^'°^ Salome,^' and the cover designs 
from The Yellow Book and The Savoy ; Mr William Heine- 
maim, for the study of Rudyard Kipling from Twelve 
Pm-iraits by William Nicholson; Messrs J. M Dent & 
mI ^]?; fr ^""^'^^ Beardsley's page decoration from the 
Morte d Arthur ; Messrs George Routledge & Sons Ltd., for 
the frontispiece and title-page of The House of Joy, by 
Laurence Housman ; the proprietors of Punch, for "A 
Lecture m Store," by Phil May ; the editor of Vanity Fair, 
for the caricature of Phil May by Spy ; the editor of The 
Saturday Review, for William Rothenstein's cover design of 
the Christmas Supplement, 1896; Mr Walter Crane and 
Messrs George Allen & Co. Ltd., for the illustration from the 
decorated edition of the Faerie Queene ; Mr Walter Crane 
ior the Socialist cartoon, "A Garland for May Day » • Mr 
Francis Meynell, for the photograph of the life mask of 
Francis Thompson; Mr Raven Hill, for "A Voluptuary," 
from Pzek-me-up; Mr Charles Ricketts, for the decorated 
pages from the Vale Press edition of John Gray's Spiritual 
Poenis; the executors of Wilham Morris, for the page from 
the Kelrnscott Coleridge ; Mr Max Beerbohm, for his carica- 
ture of Aubrey Beardsley and "Mr W. B. Yeats introducing 
Mr George Moore to the Queen of the Fairies "; and my 
friends Mr Frederick H. Evans, for his portrait study of 
Beards^y; Mr William Rothenstein, for his drawing of 
A E. Housman; Mr S. H. Sime, for "The Banks of the 
btyx ; Mr Grant Richards, for the "Arrival of Prince 

TT""?^ f^"^ "^^^" ^"^^^^k F^»'" by Charles Conder • 
and Mr Frederick Richardson, for untiring help and man; 
suggestions during the making of the book in all its stages. ' 

T ^ . , HoLBRooK Jackson. 

London, October, 1913. 



CHAPTER I 

FIN DE SIECLE 1890-1900 

IN the year 1895 Max Beerbohm announced, how whimsic- 
ally and how ironically it is not necessary to consider, 
that he felt himself a trifle out-moded. " I belong to 
the Beardsley period," he said. The Eighteen Nineties were 
then at their meridian ; but it was already the afternoon of 
the Beardsley period. That very year Aubrey Beardsley's 
strange black and white masses and strong delicate lines 
disappeared from The Yellow Book, and he only contributed 
to the first few numbers of The Savoy, which began in 1896. 
Fatal disease was overtaking him, and remorse. Aubrey 
Beardsley actually abandoned his period in the evening of 
its brief day, and when he died, in 1898, the Beardsley period 
had almost become a memory. But, after all, Aubrey 
Beardsley was but an incident of the Eighteen Nineties, 
and only relatively a significant incident. He was but one 
expression oifin de siecle daring, of a bizarre and often exotic 
courage, prevalent at the time and connected but indirectly, 
and often negatively, with some of the most vital movements 
of a decade which was singularly rich in ideas, personal 
genius and social will. Aubrey Beardsley crowded the vision 
of the period by the peculiarity of his art rather than by any 
need there was of that art to make the period complete. 
He was, therefore, not a necessity of the Eighteen Nineties, 
although his appearance in the decade was inevitable ; in- 
deed he was so essentially j^n de siecle that one can say of him 
with more confidence than of any other artist of the decade 
that his appearance at any other time would have been 
inopportune. 

The Eighteen Nineties were so tolerant of novelty in art 
and ideas that it would seem as though the declining century 
B 17 



18 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

wished to make amends for several decades of intellectual 
and artistic monotony. It may indeed be something more 
than coincidence that placed this decade at the close of a 
century, and^w de Steele may have been at one and the same 
time a swan song and a death-bed repentance. As a matter 
of fact, a quickening of life during the last years of a century 
is not without parallel. The preceding century closed with 
the French Revolution and the First Consulate of Napoleon, 
and the sixteenth century closed with the destruction of the 
Armada and the appearance of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, 
Spenser, Christopher Marlowe and Francis Bacon ; whilst 
the close of the fifteenth century saw the Revival of Learning, 
and the discovery of America by Columbus and of Newfound- 
land by Cabot. One cannot avoid the temptation to specu- 
late on the meaning of such fin de siecle occurrences, for we 
are actually made more conscious of our standing towards 
time by the approaching demise of a century, just as we are 
made conscious of our own ages on birthday anniversaries 
and New Year's Eve. And it is at least thinkable that as we 
are certainly moved in the latter circumstances to pull our- 
selves together, as it were, even if the effort be only an in- 
stinctive attempt to find in action forgetfulness of the flight 
of time ; so it is equally thinkable that a similar but racial 
instinct towards unique activity may come about at so im- 
pressive a period as the close of a century. But, whatever 
the cause, the last decade of the last century was, in spite of 
its many extravagances, a renascent period, characterised by 
much mental activity and a quickening of the imagination, 
combined with pride of material prosperity, conquest and 
imperial expansion, as well as the desire for social service 
and a fuller communal and personal life. 

Max Nordau, the Jeremiah of the period, linked up his 
famous attack on what were called ''fin de sieele tendencies " 
with certain traditional beliefs in the evil destiny of the 
closure of centuries. " The disposition of the times is 
curiously confused," he said; "a compound of feverish 
restlessness and blunted discouragement, of fearful presage 
and hang-dog renunciation. The prevalent feeling is that of 



The Yellow Book 

An Illustrated Quarterly 

Volume I April 1894 




London: Elkin Mathews &P John Lane 
Boston: Copeland &" Day 



Pric e 

^/- 

Net 



CovKR Design of 7>/i' Yellow Book; Volume I 

By Aubrey Beards ley 



FIN DE SIECLE— 1890-1900 19 

imminent perdition and extinction. Fin de siecle is at once 
a confession and a complaint. The old northern faith con- 
tained the fearsome doctrine of the Dusk of the Gods. In 
our days there have arisen in more highly developed minds 
vague qualms of the Dusk of the Nations, in which all suns 
and all stars are gradually waning, and mankind with all its 
institutions and creations is perishing in the midst of a dying 
world. " All of which sounds very hectic and hysterical now, 
nearly twenty years after it was first written, when many of 
the writers and artists he condemned have become harmless 
classics, and some almost forgotten. But it is interesting to 
remember Nordau's words, because they are an example of 
the very liveliness of a period which was equally lively in 
making or marring itself. The Eighteen Nineties, however, 
were not entirely decadent and hopeless ; and even their 
decadence was often decadence only in name, for much of 
the genius denounced by Max Nordau as degeneration was a 
sane and healthy expression of a vitality which, as it is not 
difficult to show, would have been better named regeneration. 
At the same time the fact must not be overlooked that 
much of the vitality of the period, much even of its effective 
vitality, was destructive of ideas and conventions which we 
had come to look upon as more or less permanent ; and one 
cannot help feeling, at this distance, that not a little of fin de 
siecle attractiveness was the result of abandonment due to 
internal chaos. But this is no cause for condemnation on 
our part, still less for self-complacency ; for, as we have been 
told by Friedrich Nietzsche, himself a half-felt motive force, 
in this country at least, behind the tendencies of the times : 
" Unless you have chaos within you cannot give birth to a 
dancing star." More than one dancing star swam into our 
ken in the last decade of the nineteenth century, and the 
proof of the regenerative powers of the period are to be found 
most obviously, but perhaps even more certainly, if not quite 
so plainly, in the fact that those who were most allied with its 
moods and whims were not only conscious of the fact, but in 
some cases capable of looking at themselves and laughing. 
Fin de siecle was a pose as well as a fact, a point not realised 



20 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

by Nordau. John Davidson, among others, was able to 
smile at its extravagances, and in Earl Lavender, his burlesque 
novel of the decadence, one of the characters, a garrulous 
Cockney dame with a smattering of French, reveals the 
existence of power to cast what Meredith would have called 
" the oblique ray " upon the doings of the time. " IVsfang- 
de-seeaycle that does it, my dear," says this lady, "and 
education, and reading French." 

It is obvious, then, that people felt they were living amid 
changes and struggles, intellectual, social and spiritual, and 
the interpreters of the hour — the publicists, journalists and 
popular purveyors of ideas of all kinds — did not fail to make 
a sort of traffic in the spirit of the times. Anything strange 
or uncanny, anything which savoured of freak and perversity, 
was swiftly labelled fin de siecle, and given a certain topical 
prominence. The term became a fashion, and writers vied 
one with another as to which should apply it most aptly. 
At least one writer emphasised the phrase in an attempt to 
stigmatise it. "Observe," wrote Max Beerbohm, "that I 
write no fool's prattle about le fin de siecle." And Max 
Nordau gives a useful list illustrating the manner in which 
the term was used in the country of its birth. A king who 
abdicates but retains by agreement certain political rights, 
which he afterwards seHs to his country to provide means for 
the liquidation of debts contracted by play in Paris, is a fin 
de siecle king. The police official who removes a piece of the 
skin of the murderer Pranzini after execution and has it 
tanned and made into a cigar-case, is a fin de siecle official. 
An American wedding ceremony held in a gasworks and the 
subsequent honeymoon in a balloon is afi7i de siecle wedding. 
A schoolboy who, on passing the gaol where his father is 
imprisoned for embezzlement, remarks to a chum : " Look, 
that's the governor's school," is a fin de siecle son. These 
are only a few from among innumerable examples illustrating 
the liveliness of the people of the Nineties to their hour and 
its characteristics. A further indication of the way in which 
the phrase permeated the mind of the period is found in its 
frequent occurrence in the books and essays of the day. It 



FIN DE SIECLE— 1890-1900 21 

appears fittingly enough in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of 
Dorian Gray, that typical book of the period, as a reflection 
upon an epigram afterwards used in A Woman of No 
Importance. Lady Narborough is saying : 

" ' If we women did not love you for your defects, where 
would you all be ? Not one of you would ever be married. 
You would be a set of unfortunate bachelors. Not, however, 
that that would alter you much. Nowadays all the married 
men live like bachelors and all the bachelors like married 
men ! ' 

" ' Fin de siecle,'' murmured Sir Henry. 

" ' Fin du globe,^ answered his hostess. 

" 'I wish it were fin du globe,'' said Dorian, with a sigh. 
' Life is a great disappointment.' " 

A reviewer of the novel, in The Speaker of 5th July 1890, 
describes Lord Henry Wotton as " an extvemely fin-de-siecle 
gentleman." And another book of the period, Baron 
Verdigris : A Romance of the Reversed Direction, by Jocelyn 
Quilp, issued in 1894, with a frontispiece by Beardsley, is 
prefaced by the following inscription : — 

This Book is Dedicated equally to Fin-de-Siecleism, the 
Sensational Novel, and the Conventional Drawing-Room 
Ballad. 

But side by side with the prevailing use of the phrase, and 
running its popularity very close, came the adjective " new " ; 
it was applied in much the same way to indicate extreme 
modernity. Like fin de siecle, it hailed from France, and, 
after its original apphcation in the phrase Vart nouveau had 
done considerable service in this country as a prefix to 
modern pictures, dresses and designs, our publicists dis- 
covered that other things were equally worthy of the useful 
adjective. Grant Allen wrote of " The New Hedonism " ; 
H. D. Traill, of " The New Fiction," opening his essay with 
the words : " Not to be new is, in these days, to be nothing." 



22 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

In August 1892 William Sharp designed and produced one 
number, and one only, of The Pagan Review, which was 
written entirely by himself under various pseudonyms, to 
promote the "New Paganism," described as "a potent 
leaven in the yeast of the ' younger generation,' and which 
was concerned only with the new presentment of things." 
And again, in the famous attack on The Picture of Dorian 
Gray, in the St James's Gazette, on the first appearance of the 
novel in the pages of Lippincotfs Monthly Magazine for July 
1890, reference is made to " The New Voluptuousness " 
which "always leads up to bloodshedding. " Oscar Wilde 
himself wrote on " The New Remorse," in The Spirit Lamp, 
in 1892. The range of the adjective gradually spread until 
it embraced the ideas of the whole period, and we find 
innumerable references to the "New Spirit," the "New 
Humour," the "New Realism," the "New Hedonism," the 
"New Drama," the "New Unionism," the "New Party," 
and the " New W^oman." The popular, and what we should 
now call " significant," adjective was adopted by publishers 
of periodicals, and during the decade there was The New Age, 
a penny weekly with a humanitarian and radical objective, 
which, after many vicissitudes and various editorial changes, 
still survives ; while William Ernest Henley, coming under 
the spell of fashion and carrying his modernism from the 
eighties, translated The National Observer into The New 
Review. 

A decade which was so conscious of its own novelty and 
originality must have had some characteristics at least which 
distinguished it from the immediately preceding decade, if 
not from all preceding decades. The former is certainly 
true : the Eighteen Nineties possessed characteristics which 
were at once distinctive and arresting, but I doubt whether 
its sense of its own novelty was based in changes which 
lacked their counterparts in most of the decades of the nine- 
teenth century — pre-eminently a century of change. The 
period was as certainly a period of decadence as it was a 
period of renaissance. The decadence was to be seen in a 
perverse and finicking glorification of the fine arts and mere 



FIN DE SIECLE— 1890-1900 23 

artistic virtuosity on the one hand, and a militant commercial 
movement on the other. The one produced The Yellow 
Book and the literature and art of " fine shades," with their 
persistent search for the " unique word " and the " brilliant " 
expression; the other produced the "Yellow Press," the 
boom in "Kaffirs," the Jameson Raid, the Boer War and 
the enthronement of the South African plutocrat in Park 
Lane. But this decadent side of the Nineties must not be 
looked upon as wholly evil. Its separation from a move- 
ment obviously ascendant in spirit is not altogether admis- 
sible. The two tendencies worked together, and it is only 
for the sake of historical analysis that I adopt the method 
of segregation. Taken thus the decadence reveals qualities 
which, even if nothing more than " the soul of goodness 
in things evil," are at times surprisingly excellent. The de- 
cadent vision of an Aubrey Beardsley introduced a new sense 
of rhythm into black and white art, just as the, on the whole, 
trivial masters of " fine shades," with their peacock phrases, 
helped us towards a newer, more sensitive and more elastic 
prose form. The " Yellow Press," with all its extravagances, 
was at least alive to the desires of the crowd, and the reverse 
of dull in the presentment of its views ; and if it gave Demos 
the superficial ideas he liked, it was equally prepared to 
supply a better article when the demand arose. And, withal, 
a wider publicity was given to thought-provoking ideas and 
imaginative themes, although adjusted, and often very much 
adjusted, to the average taste, than had hitherto been 
possible. As for the "New Park Lane " and the "New " 
aristocracy, they in their garish abandonment helped us to 
apply the abstract science of economics to life, thus probably 
preparing the path for the Super-tax and other so-called 
" Socialistic " legislation of to-day. But apologies for the 
decadent side of the period do not complete the story of the 
renaissance of the Nineties. This latter was more real than 
the much-advertised decadence, and as time goes on it will 
prove itself to have been more enduring. The atmosphere 
of the Eighteen Nineties was alert with new ideas which 
sought to find expression in the average national life. If 



24 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

luxury had its art and its traffic, so had a saner and more 
balanced social consciousness. If the one demanded freedom 
for an individual expression tending towards degeneration 
and perversion, the other demanded a freedom which should 
give the common man opportunities for the redemption of 
himself and his kind. Side by side with the poseur worked 
the reformer, urged on by the revolutionist. There were 
demands for culture and social redemption. A wave of 
transcendentalism swept the country, drawing with it the 
brighter intelligences of all classes ; but it was not remote, 
it was of the earth and of the common life and hour, seeking 
the immediate regeneration of society by the abolition of such 
social evils as poverty and overwork, and the meanness, ugli- 
ness, ill-health and commercial rapacity which characterised so 
much of modern life. The vitality of this awakening of the 
social consciousness is proved by its extravagances. In the 
main it worked persistently, cheerfully and with that spirit 
of compromise dear to the English temperament, as can be 
seen by a reference to the pages of The Daily Chronicle^ under 
the editorship of A. E. Fletcher ; The Star, under T. P. 
O'Connor; T'he New Age oi the period ; Robert Blatchford's 
Clarion, and W. T. Stead's Review of Reviews. But now and 
then the cup of social zeal was too full ; it overflowed, and 
one heard of the bomb of over-zealous anarchist ; of the 
revolt of righteously impatient starvelings among the newly 
awakened proletariat, and of the purely negative mihtancy 
of the "Nonconformist conscience," which used the new- 
born and enthusiastic London County Council and Mrs 
Ormiston Chant as the instruments of a moral crusade among 
West End music halls, then only just discovered as more or 
less harmless and instructive places of entertainment by 
those guardians of British respectability — the lower middle 
classes. 

In all these things the Eighteen Nineties were unique only 
in method and in the emphasis they gave to certain circum- 
stances and ideas. The Eighteen Eighties and the late 
Seventies had been even more " artistic " than the Nineties, 
and the preceding decade had also its riots and revolutionary 



FIN DE SIECLE— 1890-1900 25 

organisations. Max Beerbohm, in a delightful essay which 
could only have been written in the Nineties and could only 
have appeared in The Yellow Book, has given us with subtle 
humour and satire a little history, not entirely free from 
caricature, of the Eighties. In the essay called " 1880 " he 
opens, as it were, a window in the house of the Nineties 
through which we get a fair glimpse of the immediate past. 
He says : 

" Beauty had existed long before 1880. It was Mr Oscar 
Wilde who managed her debut. To study the period is to 
admit that to him was due no small part of the social vogue 
that Beauty began to enjoy. Fired by his fervid words, men 
and women hurled their mahogany into the streets and 
ransacked the curio-shops for the furniture of Annish days. 
Dados arose upon every wall, sunflowers and the feathers of 
peacocks curved in every corner, tea grew quite cold while 
the guests were praising the Willow Pattern of its cup. A 
few fashionable women even dressed themselves in sinuous 
draperies and unheard-of greens. Into whatsoever ballroom 
you went, you would surely find, among the women in tiaras 
and the fops and the distinguished foreigners, half a score of 
comely ragamuffins in velveteen, murmuring sonnets, postur- 
ing, waving their hands. Beauty was sought in the most un- 
likely places. Young painters found her robed in the fogs, 
and bank clerks, versed in the writings of Mr Hammerton, 
were heard to declare, as they sped home from the City, that 
the underground railway was beautiful from London Bridge 
to Westminster, but not from Sloane Square to Notting Hill 
Gate, ^stheticism (for so they named the movement) did 
indeed permeate in a manner all classes. But it was to the 
haul monde that its primary appeal was made. The sacred 
emblems of Chelsea were sold in the fashionable toy-shops, 
its reverently chanted creeds became the patter of the 
boudoirs. The old Grosvenor Gallery, that stronghold of 
the few, was verily invaded. Never was such a fusion of 
delighted folk as at its private views. There was Robert 
Browning, the philosopher, doffing his hat with a courtly 



26 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

sweep to more than one duchess. There, too, was Theo 
Marzials, poet and eccentric, and Charles Colnaghi, the hero 
of a hundred teafights, and young Brookfield, the comedian, 
and many another good fellow. My Lord of Dudley, the 
virtuoso, came there, leaning for support upon the arm 
of his fair young wife. Disraeh, with the lustreless eyes 
and face like some seamed Hebraic parchment, came, also, 
and whispered behind his hand to the faithful Corry. And 
Walter Sickert spread the latest mot of 'the Master,' who, 
with monocle, cane and tilted hat, flashed through the gay 
mob anon." 

There is also ample evidence of the social earnestness of 
the preceding decade in memories of the dock strike of 1889, 
which brought John Burns and Tom Mann to the front as 
the "new " labour leaders, and of the riots of 1886, which 
culminated in a free speech demonstration in Trafalgar 
Square on Sunday, 13th November 1887, when the Life 
Guards were called out, and during the clearing of the Square 
a young man lost his life. The first British Socialist organ- 
isation of any note, the Social Democratic Federation, later 
called the Social Democratic Party, and more recently 
merged in the British Socialist Party, was formed by Henry 
Mayers Hyndman, who had for chief supporter William 
Morris, in 1881. Two years later the Fabian Society was 
founded, and this organisation drew to its ranks the middle- 
class "intellectuals," who were beginning to interest them- 
selves in Socialism. These included Sidney Webb, Bernard 
Shaw, Sydney Olivier, Graham Wallas, Annie Besant, Hubert 
Bland, Frank Podmore, Stewart Headlam and others who 
had made, or were about to make, their mark in various 
branches of the intellectual life. It was these various 
Socialist activities which made the formation of the Inde- 
pendent Labour Party a possibility in 1892, and the return 
of Keir Hardie, its first representative, to Parliament, in the 
same year. 

But the chief characteristics of the Eighteen Nineties 
proper, although dovetailed into the preceding decade, may 



FIN DE SIECLE— 1890-1900 27 

be indicated roughly under three heads. These were the so- 
called Decadence ; the introduction of a Sense of Fact into 
literature and art ; and the development of a Transcendental 
View of Social Life. But again, it must not be assumed 
that these characteristics were always separate. To a very 
considerable extent they overlapped, even where they were 
not necessarily interdependent. Oscar Wilde, for instance, 
bridged the chasm between the self-contained individualism 
of the decadents and the communal aspirations of the more 
advanced social revolutionaries. His essay. The Soul of 
Man under Socialism, has been acclaimed by recognised 
upholders of Socialism. And even his earlier sestheticism 
(which belonged to the Eighties) was an attempt to apply 
the idea of art to mundane affairs. Bernard Shaw, rational- 
ist and anti-romantic apostle of the sense of fact, openly used 
art to provoke thought and to give it a social, as distinct from 
an individualist, aim ; just as other and more direct literary 
realists, such as Emile Zola and Henrik Ibsen, had done before 
him, either avowedly or by implication. The more typical 
realists of the Nineties, George Gissing and George Moore, 
seem to be devoid of deliberate social purpose, but the pre- 
valent didacticism of the period is strikingly pronounced in 
the work of H. G. Wells, who has contrived better than any 
other writer of his time to introduce reality into his novels 
without jeopardising romance, to hammer home a theory of 
morality without delimiting his art. But apart from such 
obvious resemblances between types ot fin de siecle genius, 
the popular idea of the period looked upon one phase of its 
thought as no less characteristic than another. The adjec- 
tive " new " as an indicator of popular consciousness of 
what was happening, was, as we have seen, applied indiffer- 
ently to all kinds of human activity, from art and morals to 
humour and Trade Unionism. 

There is no clearer example of the intimate relationship 
between what might have been called the degenerate notions 
of the period and those which are admittedly regenerate, than 
a comparison of the Epicurean ideas in such strikingly differ- 
ent works as Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and 



28 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

Grant Allen's essay on "The New Hedonism," which 
appeared in The Fortnightly Review of March 1894. Oscar 
Wilde says : 

" Yes : there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a 
new Hedonism that was to recreate life, and to save it from 
that harsh, uncomely Puritanism that is having, in our own 
day, its curious revival. It was to have its service of the 
intellect, certainly ; yet it was never to accept any theory 
or system that would involve the sacrifice of any mode of 
passionate experience. Its aim, indeed, was to be experience 
itself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they 
might be. Of the asceticism that deadens the senses, as of 
the vulgar profligacy that dulls them, it was to know nothing. 
But it was to teach man to concentrate himself upon the 
moments of a life that is itself but a moment." 

Here we have a kind of self-culture by the constant varia- 
tion of experiences, mostly passionate, with little if any 
reference to the rest of humanity. In a sense it is not a new 
Hedonism at all, but a Hedonism which had existed from 
time immemorial, although it found its way into Oscar Wilde's 
novel by the aid of two modern books. One of these, the 
A Rebours of Joris Karl Huysmans, may be said to contain 
the apotheosis of the fin de siecle spirit ; the other, The 
Renaissance, by Walter Pater, containing a famous passage 
which became the precious gospel of the ^Esthetic Movement 
of the Seventies and Eighties. It was new, however, in so 
far as it reacted against the " Nonconformist conscience " of 
the moment. But that it was not the only " New " Hedon- 
ism may be realised by reference to Grant Allen's essay, which 
is little more than a veiled piece of Socialist propaganda. 
The central idea of this sociological Hedonism is shown in 
the following extract : — 

" Self-development, on the contrary, is an aim for all — an 
aim which will make all stronger, and saner, and wiser, and 
better. To be sound in wind and limb ; to be healthy of 
body and mind ; to be educated, to be emancipated, to be 



FIN DE SIECLE— 1890-1900 29 

free, to be beautiful — these things are ends towards which 
all should strain, and by attaining which all are happier in 
themselves, and more useful to others. That is the central 
idea of the new hedonism. We see clearly that it is good for 
every man among us that he and every other man should 
be as tall, as strong, as well knit, as supple, as wholesome, 
as effective, as free from vice or defect as possible. We see 
clearly that it is his first duty to make his own muscles, his 
own organs, his own bodily functions, as perfect as he can 
make them, and to transmit them in like perfection, un- 
spoiled, to his descendants. We see clearly that it is good 
for every woman among us that she and every other woman 
should be as physically developed and as finely equipped for 
her place as mother as it is possible to make herself. We see 
that is good for every woman that there should be such men, 
and for every man that there should be such women. We 
see it is good for every child that it should be born of such a 
father and such a mother. We see that to prepare ourselves 
for the duties of paternity and maternity, by making our- 
selves as vigorous and healthful as we can be, is a duty we 
all owe to our children unborn and to one another. We see 
that to sacrifice ourselves, and inferentially them, is not a 
thing good in itself, but rather a thing to be avoided where 
practicable, and only to be recommended in the last resort as 
an unsatisfactory means of escape from graver evils. We see 
that each man and each woman holds his virility and her 
femininity in trust for humanity, and that to play fast and 
loose with either, at the bidding of priests or the behest of 
Puritans, is a bad thing in itself, and is fraught with danger 
for the State and for future generations." 

The intellectual, imaginative and spiritual activities of the 
Eighteen Nineties are concerned mainly with the idea of 
social life or, if you will, of culture ; and the individual and 
social phases of that culture are broadly represented by the 
above quotations. For that reason alone the period is inter- 
esting apart from any achievements in art or science or state- 
craft. It is interesting because it was a time when people 



30 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

went about frankly and cheerfully endeavouring to solve the 
question " How to Live." From one point of view such an 
employment suggests the bewilderment of a degenerate 
world, and it would seem entirely to justify the lamentations 
of Max Nordau ; but those who lived through the Nineties 
as young men and women will remember that this search for 
a new mode of life was anything but melancholy or diseased. 
The very pursuit was a mode of hfe sufficiently joyful to 
make life worth living. But in addition there was the feeling 
of expectancy, born not alone of a mere toying with novel 
ideas, but born equally of a determination to taste new 
sensation, even at some personal risk, for the sake of life and 
growth. 

"A great creative period is at hand," wrote William 
Sharp, in his preface to Vistas ; " probably a great dramatic 
epoch. But what will for one thing differentiate it from 
any predecessor is the new complexity, the new subtlety, 
in apprehension, in formative conception, in imaginative 
rendering." 

It was an era of hope and action. People thought any- 
thing might happen ; and, for the young, any happening 
sufficiently new was good. Little of the older sentimental- 
ism survived among the modernists ; those who were of the 
period desired to be in the movement, and not mere spec- 
tators. It was a time of experiment. Dissatisfied with the 
long ages of convention and action which arose out of pre- 
cedent, many set about testing life for themselves. The new 
man wished to be himself, the new woman threatened to live 
her own life. The snapping of apron-strings caused con- 
sternation in many a decent household, as young men and 
maidens were suddenly inspired to develop their own souls 
and personalities. Never, indeed, was there a time when the 
young were so young or the old so old. No family, were 
its record for solid British respectability established on no 
matter how secure a basis, was immune from new ideas ; 
and if the bourgeoisie of the Eighteen Eighties were inspired i 
to throw their mahogany into the streets, as we have been * 
assured they were by Max Beerbohm, their successors of the 



FIN DE SIECLE— 1890-1900 31 

Eighteen Nineties were barely constrained from doing the 
same with their most cherished principles. Decadent minor 
poets sprang up in the most unexpected places. The staidest 
of Nonconformist circles begot strange, pale youths with 
abundant hair, whose abandoned thoughts expressed them- 
selves in "purple patches " of prose, and whose sole aim in 
life was to live "passionately " in a succession of "scarlet 
moments." Life-tasting was the fashion, and the rising 
generation felt as though it were stepping out of the cages 
of convention and custom into a freedom full of tremendous 
possibilities. 

There were misigivings in more directions than one, but 
these had small effect upon the spirit of the first half of the 
decade. The experimental life went on in a swirl of song 
and dialectics. Ideas were in the air. Things were not what 
they seemed, and there were visions about. The Eighteen 
Nineties was the decade of a thousand "movements." 
People said it was a "period of transition," and they 
were convinced that they were passing not only from 
one social system to another, but from one morality to 
another, from one culture to another, and from one religion 
to a dozen or none ! But as a matter of fact there was no 
concerted action. Everybody, mentally and emotionally, 
was running about in a hundred different directions. There 
was so much to think about, so much to discuss, so much to 
see. "A New Spirit of Pleasure is abroad amongst us," 
observed Richard Le Gallienne, " and one that blows from 
no mere coteries of hedonistic philosophers, but comes on the 
four winds." The old sobriety of mind had left our shores, 
and we changed from a stolid into a volatile nation. At this 
time the provinces saw the birth of a new type of music hall, 
the "Palace of Varieties," with two performances a night, 
and we began to amuse ourselves. 

Our new-found freedom seemed to find just the expression 
it needed in the abandoned nonsense chorus of Ta-ra-ra- 
hoom-de-ay ! ^ which, lit at the red skirts of Lottie Collins, 
spread like a dancing flame through the land, obsessing the 

' See A Modern History oj the English People, by R. H. Gretton. 



32 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

minds of young and old, gay and sedate, until it became a 
veritable song-pest, provoking satires even upon itself in the 
music halls of its origin. No song ever took a people in quite 
the same way ; from 1892 to 1896 it affected the country Uke 
an epidemic ; and during those years it would seem to have 
been the absurd ga ira of a generation bent upon kicking over 
the traces. Even to this day one can hear the song in the 
streets of Boulogne and Dieppe, where the urchins croak it 
for the benefit of the English visitor, under the firm convic- 
tion that it is the British National Anthem, and in hopes 
that the patriotic Britishers will reward their efforts with 
petit sous.^ 

The old dim and dowdy chop-houses and taverns also 
changed with our new mood, and they were replaced by 
larger and brighter restaurants and " tea shops," daintier 
food and orchestras, and we extended the habit of dining out, 
and mixing afternoon tea with shopping. 

The " safety " bicycle was invented, and it took its place 
as an instrument of the " new " freedom as we glided forth 
in our thousands into the country, accompanied by our 
sisters and sweethearts and wives, who sometimes abandoned 
skirts for neat knickerbocker suits. " The world is divided 
into two classes," said a wit of the period, "those who ride 
bicycles and those who don't." But the great novelty was 
the woman cyclist, the New Woman rampant, but she was 
sometimes very charming also, and we immortalised her in 
our Palaces of Varieties : 

" Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do, 
I'm half crazy all for the love of you ! 
It won't be a stylish marriage, 
I can't afford a carriage, 
But you'll look neat. 
Upon the seat 
Of a bicycle made for two." 

^ This was true in 191 3, but now (1922) a new generation of urchins 
has arisen in Boulogne and other French towns who know not Ta-ra_ 
bao7)i-de-ay. This famous ditty has been declassed by Tipperairie. 



■ 



CHAPTER II 

PERSONALITIES AND TENDENCIES 

SUCH manifestations of liveliness may seem to be of 
no very great importance to-day, but many minor 
freedoms now enjoyed by all without question were 
then the subjects of battle. It is difficult to realise even now 
how many changes in taste, ideas and habits were crammed 
into the fin de Steele decade. For it has been too readily 
assumed that the achievement of the Eighteen Nineties is 
confined to that literary and artistic renaissance described by 
W. G. Blaikie Mm-doch in The Renaissance of the Nineties. 
But such a conclusion is unjust to the period. The fine arts 
did flourish during the decade, and although many of the 
results were as ephemeral as they were extraordinary, others 
represent permanent additions to our store of artistic expres- 
sion. Still, this habit of looking upon the renaissance as an 
affair of books and pictures has led too many into the belief 
that the main current of the artistic movement was solely 
an extension of the art-for-art's-sake principle ; when, as a 
matter of fact, the renaissance of the Nineties was far more 
concerned with art for the sake of life than with art for the 
sake of art. The men with the larger prodigality of genius 
were not engaged chiefly with art as art ; for good or ill they 
were engaged equally with ideas and life. Popular taste also 
was attracted by the artist-philosopher, as may be seen by its 
readiness to appreciate the older and more didactic painters 
and writers— just as in other years it had enjoyed the didac- 
ticism of Charles Dickens. Thus George Frederick Watts, 
Holman Hunt, 'Ford Madox Brown, Burne-Jones, for in- 
aice, though not of the period, received their nearest 
, proach to popularity then ; and the same may be said of 
William Morris, Walter Crane, and the craftsmen generally 



34 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

who had evolved out of the Ruskinian gospel of "joy and 
work " and the Pre-Raphaelite movement. 

This obvious taste on the part of the thoughtful public of 
the fin de siecle for art served with ideas found much to its 
liking in the writers who came into prominence during the 
time. Oscar Wilde I have already indicated as bridging 
the Eighties and Nineties, just as his art united the un- 
compromising artistic sufficiency upheld by Whistler and the 
art-culture of Pater. But there were in literature, besides, 
Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, using plays and novels for 
criticising morality and teaching newer modes of social life ; 
Rudyard Kipling and William Ernest Henley using verse 
to stimulate patriotism ; Francis Adams singing revolt ; 
Edward Carpenter, democracy ; William Watson, justice ; 
and these were as characteristic of the Eighteen Nineties 
as the self-centred poets and critics and storytellers who 
clustered about The Yellow Book and The Savoy. Even 
painters, Charles Ricketts and James Pryde and William 
Nicholson, typical products of the period, turned their genius 
for a time into the realm of applied art ; the first, like William 
Morris, in the making of beautiful books, and the two latter 
by becoming, under the pseudonym of the Beggarstaff 
Brothers, the founders of our modern school of poster de- 
signers. And apart from all of these instances of art applied 
to life, or used to stimulate life, the abundant practical 
genius of an age which strove always to express itself in the 
reordering of social conditions, in innumerable activities 
called "progressive," embracing besides social, commercial, 
scientific and imperial affairs, supplies sufficient evidence of 
the breadth and variety of a renaissance which strove to 
triumph over what was merely artistic. 

The movement of the Eighteen Nineties, however, which 
has most engaged the attention of writers, the movement 
called "Decadent," or by the names of Oscar Wilde or 
Aubrey Beardsley, the movement Max Nordau denounced 
in Europe generally, and recently summed up by The Times 
under the epithet "The Yellow Nineties," does even now 
dominate the vision as we look backwards. And, indeed, 



I 



The Saturday Review 



jgij^jaj^a i 




('o\-KK Desi(;n ok The SAiCRnAV KErJinr Christmas Supplkmknt (1890) 

/)'i' Wi'liitiii Rothenstfin 



PERSONALITIES AND TENDENCIES 35 

though only a part of the renaissance, it was sufficiently 
"brilliant," to use one of its own cliches, to dazzle those 
capable of being dazzled by the achievements of art and 
letters for many years to come. For a renaissance of art 
and ideas which in literature had for exemplars Oscar Wilde 
(his best books were all published in the Nineties), Bernard 
Shaw, H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, John Davidson, Hubert 
Crackenthorpe, W\ B. Yeats, J. M. Barrie, Alice Meynell, 
George Moore, Israel Zangwill, Henry Harland, George 
Gissing, "John Oliver Hobbes," Grant Allen, Quiller Couch, 
Max Beerbohm, Cunninghame Graham, Fiona Macleod 
(William Sharp), Richard Le Gallienne, Ernest Dowson, 
Arthur Symons, Lionel Johnson, and A. B. Walkley ; and 
in pictorial art, James Pryde, William Nicholson, Phil May, 
William Orpen, Aubrey Beardsley, E. E. Hornel, Wilson 
Steer, Charles Ricketts, J. J. Shannon, Charles Shannon, 
John Lavery, John Duncan Fergusson, J. T. Peploe, Charles 
Conder and William Rothenstein could not have been other 
than arresting, could not, indeed, be other than important 
in the history of the arts. For, whatever may be the ultim- 
ate place of these workers in literature and painting in the 
national memory, and whatever value we set upon them 
then and now, few will deny that even the least of them did 
not contribute something of lasting or of temporary worth 
to the sensations and ideas of their age, or its vision of life, 
and to its conception of spiritual or mental power. 

As to what individuals among these writers and painters 
were the peculiar products of the Eighteen Nineties — that is, 
those who could not, or might not, have been produced by 
any other decade — it is not always easy to say. In dealing 
with the writers the book-lists of John Lane, Elldn Mathews 
and Leonard Smithers are useful guides in any process of 
narrowing-down ; and further guidance may be found by a 
perusal of the files of The Yellow Book and The Savoy, for 
these two publications were the favourite lamps around 
which the most bizarre moths of the Nineties clustered. 
There were few essential writers of the Nineties wlio did not 
contribute to one or the other, and the very fact that Henry 



36 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

Harland, who edited the former, and Arthur Symons, who 
edited the latter, were able to gather together so many 
writers and artists who were at once novel and notable, 
emphasises the distinction of the artistic activities of the 
time. But that emphasis should not be taken as indicating 
merely an awakening of virtuosity during the Nineties ; 
the many definite artistic movements, embracing both 
writers and painters and craftsmen, could not have occurred 
had there not been a considerable receptivity among the 
people of the time, A renaissance of art depends equally 
upon artist and public ; the one is the complement of the 
other. The Eighteen Nineties would have been unworthy 
of special notice had there not been a public capable of 
responding to its awakening of taste and intelligence. 

But doubt is set at rest when we remember how numerous 
were the excellent periodicals issued with fair evidence of 
success. No other decade in English history has produced 
so many distinctive and ambitious publications ; for, apart 
from The Yellow Book and The Savoy, there were The Parade, 
The Pageant, The Evergreen. The Chameleon, The Hobby 
Horse, The Rose Leaf and, later on, The Quarto, The Dmne, 
and that able magazine's musical brother, The Chord. These 
periodicals were, of course, the journals which represented 
the unique qualities in the literature and art of the decade ; 
they were bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh. But, im- 
portant as they are, they do not by any means complete the 
typical and characteristic journalism of the period, for many 
less exclusive journals, journals making a wider public 
appeal, must be named— such notable examples of periodical 
literature and art, for example, as The Studio, The Butterfly, 
The Poster, To-Morrow, Eureka, and more popular still, but 
excellent also in their way, The Idler, To-Day and Pick-me- 
up. The last, during its best days, and these covered several 
years, had among its contributors many of the best black- 
and-white artists of the decade ; Phil May, Raven Hill, 
A. S. Hartrick, W. T. Manuel, S. H. Sime and Edgar Wilson 
regularly sent drawings to this sportive publication, which 
for genius and humour have not been excelled, even by Punch. 



PERSONALITIES AND TENDENCIES 37 

But although these pubhcations must be named to the credit 
of the period, many of them, hke many of the distinguished 
writers I have named, might conceivably have been produced 
at any time during the past forty years. Pick-me-up, for 
example, presented no new point of view ; it was sprightly 
and humorous in the popular sense— that is to say, it ex- 
pressed the inconsequent outlook of the hon viveur of fiction 
— and persistently assumed that cosmopolitan Piccadilly 
Circus-cum-Leicester Square, and the Anglo-American Boule- 
vards des Italiens-cum-Montmartre (after midnight) were the 
last words in "life." In short, Pick-me-up represented the 
false and altogether absurd " Gay Paree " view of things — 
and to that extent it was not of a day but of all time. Such 
an attitude, however, is not inconsistent with a genius for art, 
and Pick-me-up possessed a staff of black-and-white draughts- 
men of unequalled ability, and sometimes of rare genius ; 
and in addition to its native talent it also introduced to this 
country the work of good foreign draughtsmen, including 
that of the great French artist Steinlen. Still, an able group 
of black-and-white artists is by no means a peculiarity of the 
Nineties. The Sixties had Once a Week — and Punch has 
reigned supreme from the Forties till to-day. Phil May and 
Raven Hill belonged to the artistic eminence of the Nineties, 
but, individual as they are, they might have happened in any 
other decade since Charles Keene and John Leech created 
the modern humorous pen drawing. One Pick-me-up artist, 
and only one, had anything approaching fi^i de siecle tend- 
encies ; that artist was (and is) S. H. Sime : he is an art 
product of the Nineties, along with Aubrey Beardsley, 
Charles Conder, Charles Ricketts and Laurence Housman. 

The literary movement of the Eighteen Nineties has had 
full opportunity of insisting upon itself, but had no such 
opportunity existed the books of the period would have stood 
out with a certain distinction. In the year 1890 the literary 
field was so dominated by men whose reputations had long 
since been established, either with the inner circle of bookish 
people or the larger public, that any new-comers, especially 
in poetry, were apt to be labelled " minor." Tennyson was 



38 THE EIGHTEEN NINETTES 

still alive, and Robert Browning had died only in the previous 
year ; Philip James Bailey was living, though forgotten, and 
Martin Tupper, like Browning, had passed away in 1889. 
William Morris and Algernon Charles Swinburne, although 
fully recognised as major poets, had still some good work to 
do, and there were a select few who admired the poetry of 
Coventry Patmore, and many w^ho thought well of the works 
of Lewis Morris. And among women singers Jane Ingelow 
was still living, and Christina Rossetti was yet to publish 
two more volumes. 

John Ruskin and Walter Pater were not only alive, but 
their sesthetic-social messages were finding ever wider fields 
of acceptance. "The acute but honourable minority," 
which hitherto had been George Meredith's way of referring 
to his own small following, was rapidly becoming a respect- 
able body of supporters, aided not a little by the discerning 
but whole-hearted trumpeting of a young man from Liver- 
pool, Richard Le Gallienne, who was to become a notability 
of the Nineties. Thomas Hardy, also, was established, and 
like Meredith winning to a wider, though not so tardy, popu- 
larity ; and he also was heralded by a young poet of the 
period, Lionel Johnson, in a fine study called The Art of 
Thomas Hardy (1894). John Henry Newman ended his 
ardent life in 1890, but Cardinal Manning was still living ; so 
also were the popular Church of England divines, Archdeacon 
Farrar and Canon Liddon, the equally popular Nonconform- 
ist, Charles Spurgeon, and at the antipodes of their faith, 
James Martineau. In science the great names of Thomas 
Henry Huxley, John Tyndall, Herbert Spencer, Francis 
Galton were honoured among living geniuses ; and so was 
that of Alfred Russel Wallace, who survived until the eve 
of the Great War. The historian, James Anthony Froude, 
died in 1894, and W. E. H. Lecky lived through the decade. 

Literary reputations beginning in the Seventies and 
Eighties, and only in a few cases awaiting further buttressing 
in the Nineties, were numerous ; these, besides those already 
named, included W. H. Mallock, Edmund Gosse, Andrew 
Lang, Robert Louis Stevenson, Frederic Harrison, William 




Cover Dkskin ok The Savoy, V'oi.ume I 

By Atcln-ey Beardslcy 



PERSONALITIES AND TENDENCIES 30 

Ernest Henley, John Addington Symonds, Arthur Pinero, 
Sidney Colvin, Austin Dobson, Edward Dowden, H. 1). Traill, 
Theodore Watts-Dunton, Stopford Brooke, James Payn, 
Leslie Stephen, Henry James, Grant Allen, William Black, 
Robert Bridges, Frederick Wedmore, and among more 
popular writers, Marie Corelli, Rider Haggard, and Hall 
Caine. Mrs Humphry Ward had become famous on the 
publication of Robert Elsmere, in 1888, but the importance of 
her work during the succeeding decade places her, as it does 
also George Moore, Rudyard Kipling and George Gissing, 
each of whom did good work before 1890, in the newer move- 
ment. This latter was not, however, to have its effect on 
the younger generation alone, it was so irresistible as to 
inspire even those whose life-work was more or less done to 
new and modern activities. Thus Thomas Hardy began a 
new phase of his art in 1891 with Tess of the D^Urbervilles, 
following it with the masterly, and ultra-modern, Jude the 
Obscure, in 1895. He also published his first volume of 
poems, IVessex Poems, in 1898. William Morris published 
most of his prose romances in the Nineties, including News 
from Nozvhere, in 1891, and in quick succession The Roots of 
the Mountains, The Story of the Glittering Plain, The Wood 
Beyond tJie World, and The Well at the World's End. The 
Water of the Wondrous Isles and The Story of the Sundering 
Flood were left in manuscript and published after his death. 
John Addington Symonds, whose chief work. The History of 
the Italian Renaissance, was completed between the years 
1875-1886, published In the Key of Blue, a book so typical 
in some ways of the Nineties that it might well have been 
WTitten by one of the younger generation. Frederick Wed- 
more, without being fin de siecle, published Renunciations (a 
very Eighteen-Ninety title !) in 1893, and English Episodes, 
in 1894, both of these have a freshness of vision quite of the 
period. Theodore Watts-Danton published his gipsy novel, 
Aylwin (1898). The great veteran of black-and-white art, 
George du Maurier, suddenly became a popular novelist with 
the famous Trilby in 1894, which had been preceded by Peter 
Ibbetson (1891) and succeeded by The Martian (1896) ; and 



40 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

another veteran artist of great eminence also reasserted him- 
self as a writer of first-rate power during the period, for it was 
not until 1890 that James McNeill Whistler collected and 
published in a delightful volume his " Ten O 'Clock " lecture, 
and his various letters to the newspapers, with other Press 
cuttings, under the appropriate title of The Gentle Art of 
Making Enemies. Grant Allen, besides becoming a journal- 
istic champion of the new school, himself joined the younger 
generation by the publication of The Woman Who Did, in 
1895, and Arthur W. Pinero, like Thomas Hardy with his 
novels, began a new phase as a playwright with the produc- 
tion of The Second Mrs Tanqueray, in 1893 ; for, doubtless, 
both Tess of the D^Urbervilles and The Second Mrs Tanqueray 
would have been premature in the Eighties. And, finally, 
Richard Whiteing, veteran journalist, but unknown to the 
public byname, suddenly became something like famous by the 
publication of No. 5 John Street, in the last year of the decade. 
Further evidence of the stimulating atmosphere of the 
period is to be found in the number of writers who sprang 
into existence out of the Zeitgeist of the decade, as people in 
this country were beginning to call the spirit of the times. I 
do not mean those who were of the period in the narrow^er 
sense, but those who, taking that which every writer takes 
from his time, were sufficiently general in attitude not to 
have been peculiar to any movement. Among such writers 
may be named J. M. Barrie, Conan Doyle, Maurice Hewlett, 
Owen Seaman, Barry Pain, Pett Ridge, Israel Zangwill, 
Anthony Hope, W. H. Hudson, Joseph Conrad, Jerome K. 
Jerome, Stanley Weyman, H. A. Vachell, Stephen Phillips, 
Henry Newbolt, A. E. Housman, Arthur Christopher Benson, 
William Watson, Allen Upward, and the late G. W. Steevens, 
all of whom published their first notable work in the Nineties, 
and in many instances their best work. A qualification is 
necessary in the case of W. H. Hudson, whose earliest work, 
The Purple Land that England Lost, was born " out of its due 
time " in 1885, and consequently neglected by critics and 
public. Had this remarkable book been published ten years 
later, under its abridged title. The Purple Land, such a fate 



PERSONALITIES AND TENDENCIES 41 

might not have befallen it ; the Nineties almost certainly 
would have accorded it that recognition for which it had to 
await twice ten years. Robert Hichens should also appear 
in the above list, but the fact that he ^^Tote in The Green 
Carnation (1894<) the most notable satire of the period brings 
him into the more exclusive movement. 

The ^\Titers most imbued with the spirit of the time, direct 
outcome of circumstances peculiar to the fin de siecle, will be 
more fully considered in other chapters of this book. Suffice 
it to say here that they fall roughly into groups which express 
ideas and tendencies then prevalent and, if not always taking 
the form of designed movements, indicating the existence of 
very definite though subconscious movements in the psycho- 
logy of the age. Delightful among ^w de siecle writers were 
those masters of a new urbanity, which, although in the 
direct tradition of Addison and Steele, of Dr Johnson and 
Charles Lamb, possessed a flair of its own, a whimsical per- 
versity, a "brilliance," quite new to English letters. First and 
most eminent of these urbane essayists, for like their earlier 
prototypes they practised mainly the essayist's art, comes 
Max Beerbohm, who considered himself outmoded at the 
age of twenty-four and celebrated the discovery by collecting 
his essays in a slim, red volume with paper label and uncut 
edges, and publishing them at the sign of The Bodley Head, 
in 1896, under the title of The Works of Max Beerbohm. 
From the same publishing house came fascinating volumes 
by G. S. Street, who satirised suburbans, talked charmingly 
of books, art and persons, and in The Autobiography of a Boy 
revealed the irony of the youth who wanted to be himself, 
and to live his own scarlet life, without having any particular 
self to become or any definite life to live, save that of match- 
ing his silk dressing-goAvn with the furniture of his room. 
There were also Charles Whibley, who wrote able studies of 
scoundrels and dandies ; Richard Le Gallienne, who made a 
fine art of praise and, besides reviving the picaresque novel 
of flirtation in The Quest of the Golden Girl, became a sort of 
fin de siecle Leigh Hunt ; John Davidson, who wrote the 
Fleet Street Eclogues and some curiously urbane novels, but 



42 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

who was more poet than essayist, and, latterly, was so much 
interested in ideas that he became a philosopher using litera- 
ture as his medium ; and Arthur Symons, poet of the music 
hall, the cafe and the demi-monde, literary impressionist of 
towns, and penetrating critic of the writers and ideas of the 
decadence in France and England. 

Another group of writers distinctly associated with the 
period received its inspiration from the Celtic revival. Its 
chief figure was William Butler Yeats, the Irish poet and 
dramatist, whose earliest volumes of distinction. The Countess 
Kathleen and The Celtic Twilight, were published in 1892 and 
1893. With him were Dr Douglas Hyde, George Russell 
(A.E.), John Eglinton, Lady Gregory, and others, who 
together made up the Irisli Literary Movement which 
eventually established the Irish National Theatre in Abbey 
Street, Dublin, and produced the greatest of modern Irish 
dramatists, John Millington Synge. Wales also had its 
movement, with Ernest Rhys as its chief figure ; and in 
Scotland there was a more effective revival, which clustered 
about Professor Patrick Geddes in Edinburgh and produced 
four numbers of a handsome quarterly magazine, called The 
Evergreen, in 1895, among its contributors being both " Fiona 
Macleod " and William Sharp (then supposed to be two 
separate persons). This Scottish movement was not entirely 
artistic in aim, but, like so many activities of the Nineties, it 
sought to link art and ideas with life, and so became actually 
a social movement with a Socialistic tendency. Next to 
W. B. Yeats the most prominent figure of the Celtic revival 
was Fiona Macleod, whose first book, PJiarais, A Romance of 
the Isles, appeared in 1894. There was also another Scottish 
movement, very widely appreciated on this side of the border. 
It was called the "Kail Yard School," and included the 
popular dialect fiction of J. M. Barrie, S. R. Crockett and 
" Ian Maelaren." 

The importation of realism from France began in the pre- 
ceding decade, with translations of the novels of Emile Zola, 
for which the translator and publisher, Ernest Vizetelly, 
suffered imprisonment, and with the realistic novels of George 



PERSONALITIES AND TENDENCIES 43 

Moore during the same period. That writer's vivid piece of 
reahsm, Esther Waters (1894), made history also by being the 
first notable novel to be banned by the libraries and placed 
on the Index Expurgatorius of Messrs VV. H. Smith & Son. 
In the same year a new realist arrived, in the person of 
Arthur Morrison, with Tales of Mean Streets, which was 
followed by A Child of the J ago, in 1896. These striking 
sketches of slum life were new in so far as they depicted slum 
life as a thing in itself at a time when people still looked upon 
the slums, much as they had done in the time of Dickens, as a 
subject for romantic philanthropy. W. Somerset Maugham 
published a slum novel, Liza of Lambeth, in 1897, which had 
some considerable vogue, and in 1899 Richard Whiteing's 
No. .7 John Street joined the same class. But there never 
could be more than a passing fancy for such sectional realism ; 
slums were rapidly becoming the affair of the sociologist. 
Readers of books, and also those people who rarely read 
books, turned to the more stimulating realism, which by the 
way was not free of romance, of Rudyard Kipling, who had 
hitherto appeared in the blue-grey, paper-backed pamphlets 
issued, for Anglo-Indian consumption, by Wheeler of Alla- 
habad. In 1890 their growing fame forced them upon the 
home booksellers, and when they were published in this 
country they aroused so great an interest that instead of re- 
maining curiosities of Anglo-Indian publishing they became 
the chief modern literature of the English-speaking world. 
There were realists, too, like Cunninghame Graham, who 
savoured also of the new romance, whose first book appeared 
in 1895, and in the same year Frank Harris published his 
first volume of short stories, Elder Conklin and Other Stories. 
But neither of them achieved popularity. Cold also was 
the reception given to the personal experience of poverty 
which George Gissing put into his novels ; although The New 
Grub Street (1891) was at least the first of this unfortunate 
author's works to receive anything like popular recognition. 
I have pointed out more than once that the renaissance of 
the Nineties was largely social, and much of its literature 
reveals this spirit. There were many ^Titers who made 



U THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

literature of their social zeal, more particularly among Social- 
ists. Some of the realists, indeed, were avowed Socialists. 
Richard Whiteing, Cunninghame Graham, Frank Harris and 
Grant Allen were all of that faith, George Bernard Shaw 
and Robert Blatchford persistently used their literary skill 
in the propagation of social theories, and only less directly 
was the same thing done at that time by H. G. Wells, who 
has since passed through a phase of deliberate Socialist pro- 
paganda, George Bernard Shaw's first really characteristic 
book. The Quintessence of Ihsenism, appeared in 1891, his 
first play. Widowers" Houses, in 1892, and his earliest collected 
plays. Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, in 1898, Throughout 
the Nineties he was a busy journalist, criticising music, art, 
drama, life, anything in fact that anybody would print, for 
he had views to express, and determination to express them, 
on all phases of our social life. 

Robert Blatchford published Merrie England, a remark- 
able essay in Socialist special pleading, written for the man- 
in-the-street in a strong, simple and picturesque manner. 
The book attracted wide notice, and did much towards 
consolidating the Socialist movement of the time. Over a 
million copies were sold, and it has been translated into 
Welsh, Danish, German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Spanish, 
Hebrew and Norwegian. Edward Carpenter belongs to this 
class, for although Towards Democracy was published, with 
several of his other books, in the Eighties, he wrote and 
lectured much during the Nineties. He was also one of the 
earliest of English writers to consider problems of sex. And 
finally, Sidney Webb, the social historian and sociologist, 
published his first works in the late Eighties and the Nineties : 
Socialism in England (1889), The London Programme (1892) 
and with his wife, Beatrice Webb, The History of Trades 
Unionism and Industrial Democraxnj in 1894 and 1898. The 
Nineties also saw the beginning of that careful sociological 
investigation of poverty and industrial conditions which has 
been the basis of so many recent reforms — the monumental 
inquiry of Charles Booth into the conditions of the labouring 
classes of London, This great work was begun in 1892 and 



PERSONALITIES AND TENDENCIES 45 

finished in 1903, and is recorded in seventeen volumes, 
entitled The Life and Labour of the London People. 

But there is no doubt that the most remarkable phase 
of the literary movement of the Eighteen Nineties was that 
which found expression in the work of those writers associ- 
ated with the high journalism of The Yellow Book and The 
Savoy : poets, essayists and storytellers whose books were 
in most instances published either by Mr John Lane, at the 
Bodley Head, or by Mr Elkin Mathews, both of whom were 
estabhshed in Vigo Street. At the beginning of the decade 
they were partners, under the title of Elkin Mathews »& John 
Lane ; but the partnership was dissolved, and afterwards the 
partners carried on separate businesses almost opposite each 
other in the same street. Other publishers associated with 
the new hterary movement were Henry & Co., Laurence & 
Bullen and, more intimately, Leonard Smithers, himself a 
decadent and the friend and associate of many of the leaders 
of the group. Nearer the new century the Unicorn Press 
continued some of the traditions of the early Nineties, when 
the other publishers of the movement had become normal. 
These last-named publishers, as in the case of so many of the 
British decadents, passed away with the Nineties or there- 
abouts. Mr William Heinemann was a notable publisher of 
the period and in sympathy with the younger generation ; 
so was Mr Fisher Unwin, who showed his modernism by 
advertising his books by means of posters designed by Aubrey 
Beardsley ; and Mr Grant Richards issued several important 
works of the time, notably Bernard Shaw's Plays Pleasant 
and Unpleasant, and A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad. 
The lists of any of these publishers issued during the decade 
prove interesting reading even to-day, and they reveal some- 
times a type of publisher asjfin de siecle as their literary wares. 
No one will deny, however, that The Bodley Head was the 
chief home of the new movement, for not only did TJie Yellow 
Book issue from that house, but books by Oscar Wilde, John 
Davidson, Francis Thompson, Max Beerbohm, Richard Le 
Gallienne, George Egerton, Laurence Binyon, Michael Field, 
Norman Gale, Kenneth Grahame, Lionel Johnson, Alice 



46 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

Meynell, William Watson, and G. S. Street. Leonard 
Sniithers made a unique place for himself as a fin de siecle 
publisher, and when The Savoy (1896) was published by him 
he stood courageously for the ideas and art of the decadence 
at its darkest hour. With the passing of that excellent but 
short-lived quarterly the decadence in England may be said 
to have passed away. 

The list of contributors to those two periodicals constitute 
practically the dramatis personce of the movement — with the 
notable exception of Oscar Wilde, not any of whose work 
appeared in either. The Yellow Book had Henry Harland 
for literary editor, and for art editor, Aubrey Beardsley. Its 
first four numbers (1894-1895) afford us a clear and compre- 
hensive view of the literary movement of the Nineties ; but 
after the withdrawal of Aubrey Beardsley, who transferred 
his work to The Savoy in January 1896, the policy of The 
Yellow Book seemed to change, and this change proceeded 
always more away from the characteristics of the early days, 
and, save for its yellow covers, The Yellow Book eventually 
was hardly to be distinguished from any high-class magazine 
in book form. The first numbei was in the nature of a bomb- 
shell thrown into the world of letters. It had not hitherto 
occurred to a publisher to give a periodical the dignity of 
book form ; and, although literature had before then been 
treated as journalism, it was quite a new thing in this country 
for a group of lesser-known writers and artists to be glorified 
in the regal format of a five-shilling quarterly. But the 
experiment was a success even in the commercial sense, a 
circumstance aided no doubt by its flaming cover of yellow, 
out of which the Aubrey Beardsley woman smirked at the 
public for the first time. Nothing like The Yellow Book had 
been seen before. It was newness in excelsis : novelty naked 
and unashamed. People were puzzled and shocked and 
delighted, and yellow became the colom* of the hour, the 
symbol of the time-spirit. It was associated with all that 
was bizarre and queer in art and life, with all that was out- 
rageously modern. Richard Le Gallienne wTote a prose 
fancy on " The Boom in Yellow," in which he pointed out 



PERSONALITIES AND TENDENCIES 47 

many applications of the colour with that Jin de Steele flip- 
pancy which was one of his characteristics, without, however, 
tracing the decorative use of yellow to Whistler, as he should 
have done. Nevertheless his essay recalls very amusingly 
the fashion of the moment. "Bill-posters," he says, "are 
beginning to discover the attractive qualities of the colour. 
Who can ever forget meeting for the first time upon a hoard- 
ing Mr Dudley Hardy's wonderful Yellow Girl, the pretty 
advance-guard of To-Day ? But I suppose the honour of 
the discovery of the colour for advertising purposes rests 
with Mr Colnian ; though its recent boom comes from 
publishers, and particularly from The Bodley Head, llie 
Yellow Book with any other colour would hardly have sold 
as well — ^the first private edition of Mr Arthur Benson's 
poems, by the way, came caparisoned in yellow, and with 
the identical name, Le Cahier Jaune ; and no doubt it was 
largely its title that made the success of The Yellow Aster.'''' 

The first number of The Yellow Book, published in April 
1894, contained contributions by Richard Le Gallienne, Max 
Beerbohm, Ella D'Ai'cy, Arthur Symons, Henry Harland, 
George Egerton, Hubert Crackenthorpe, John Davidson, 
John Oliver Hobbes and George Moore, all of whom were in 
the vanguard of the new movement, and among the newer 
artists, besides Aubrey Beardsley, who contributed four full 
drawings, the cover decorations and title-page, there were 
Walter Siekert, Joseph Pennell, Laurence Housman, Will 
Rothenstein, and R. Anning Bell. But although The Yellow 
Book was mainly fin de siecle it was not exclusively so, for it 
included contributions by Henry James, Arthur Christopher 
Benson, William Watson, Arthur Waugh, Richard Garnett 
and Edmund Gosse, and illustrations by J. T. Nettleship and 
Charles W. Fm'se, and, above all, as though to reassure its 
readers and the British public after the Beardsley cover, and 
certain contents to match, and to assert its fundamental 
respectability, it contained a frontispiece by Sir Frederick 
Leighton, P.RA. Volume II. had Norman Gale, Alfred 
Hayes, Dolly Radford and Kenneth Grahame among its new 
contributors, and P. Wilson Steer, E. J. Sullivan, A. S. 



48 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

Hartrick and Walter Crane among its illustrators. Volume III. 
was more modern than Volume II., for in addition to many 
of the younger generation who contributed to the earlier 
volumes it introdueed into its company Ernest Dowson, 
Lionel Johnson, Olive Custance, Theodore Wratislaw and 
Charles Dalmon, whilst Max Beerbohm was represented 
among the illustrators by his caricatiu'e of George IV. The 
most notable addition to the contributors of Volume IV. was 
Charles Conder, who sent a design for a fan ; and Volume V. 
is interesting as it contains an article by G. S. Street, the first 
English essay on Anatole France, by the Hon. Maurice 
Baring, and the first article by that distinguished French 
writer and savant ever published in England. 

In spite, however, of its novelty, and the excellence of the 
contents of its early numbers. The Yellow Book was always 
inclined not only to compromise in matters of editorial policy, 
but its contents were not always chosen according to the 
high standard such a work demanded, and this became more 
pronounced after the retirement of Beardsley. The Savoy 
pursued a different policy. Edited by Arthur Symons, it 
stood boldly for the modern note without fear and without 
any M'avering of purpose. Hence it represents the most 
ambitious and, if not the most comprehensive, the most 
satisfying achievement of fin de siecle journalism in this 
country. Such a result was inevitable with an editor of rare 
critical genius and one who had been profoundly influenced 
by the French decadents. If his choice was not always 
decadent it was always modern, even when it selected a 
drawing of a distant time. This can be seen also among the 
literary contributors to The Savoy, among whom were Arthur 
Symons, W. B. Yeats, Theodore Wratislaw, Ernest Rhys, 
Fiona Macleod, George Moore, Edward Carpenter, Ford 
Madox Hueffer and Lionel Johnson. All are fin de siecle 
writers, though differing in type and aim, and such writers 
could hardly do otherwise than give the periodical a decidedly 
modern expression, in spite of a challenging Editorial Note 
prefaced to No. 1 (dictated, it would seem, by dissatisfaction 
with the uneven editing, fin de siecle pose with apparent 



PERSONALITIES AND TENDENCIES 49 

readiness to compromise of The Yellow Book), which dis- 
avowed a definite modernist intent : 

"It is hoped that The Savoy will be a periodical of an 
exclusively literary and artistic kind. To present Literature 
in the shape of its letterpress, Art in the form of its illustra- 
tions, will be its aim. For the attainment of that aim we 
can but rely on our best endeavours and on the logic of our 
belief that good writers and artists will care to see their work 
in company with the work of good writers and artists. 
Readers who look to a new periodical for only very well- 
known or only very obscure names must permit themselves 
to be disappointed. We have no objection to a celebrity 
who deserves to be celebrated, or to an unknown person who 
has not been seen often enough to be recognised in passing. 
All we ask from our contributors is good work, and good work 
is all we offer our readers. This we offer with some confi- 
dence. We have no formulas, and we desire no false unity 
of form or matter. We have not invented a new point of 
view. We are not Realists, or Romanticists, or Decadents. 
For us, all art is good which is good art. We hope to appeal 
'^o the tastes of the intelligent by not being original for 
originality's sake, or audacious for the sake of advertisement, 
or timid for the convenience of the elderly-minded. We 
intend to print no verse which has not some close relationship 
with poetry, no fiction which has not a certain sense of what 
is finest in living fact, no criticism which has not some know- 
ledge, discernment and sincerity in its judgment. We could 
scarcely say more, and we are content to think we can 
scarcely say less." 

The Savoy lived for twelve months, and during that time it 
went far towards realising its editor's ideal. It did realise 
that ideal to the extent of not admitting anything to its pages 
which could not be recommended alone on artistic grounds, 
and it never for a moment stepped beneath its high intent 
for the sake of financial gain or any of the other snares and 
pitfalls of even well-meaning editors. Among contributors 

D 



50 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

who were modern without being decadent were Bernard 
Shaw, who is represented in the first number by his most 
essay-Hke essay, "On Going to Church "; Havelock ElHs, 
who contributed one of the earhest articles in EngUsh on 
Friedrich Nietzsche ; Frederick Wedmore, Edmund Gosse, 
Selwyn Image, Mathilde BHnd and Joseph Conrad. Besides 
these The Savoy contained translations from Paul Verlaine, 
Emil Verhaercn and Cesare Lombroso. The illustrations 
were always modern, and always distinguished, and included, 
in addition to the last and, in many instances, best of Aubrey 
Beardsley's drawings, examples of the work of Charles 
Conder, Will Rothenstein, C, H. Shannon, Max Beerbohm, 
Joseph Pennell, William T. Horton, Walter Sickert and Phil 
May. It also reveals Aubrey Beardsley as a writer in both 
prose and poetry, the former taking the shape of his aggres- 
sively modern romance, Under the Hill. The Savoy was 
admittedly an art-for-art's-sake publication, and its failure 
in twelve months through lack of support proves that there 
was at the time no public for such a publication, even though 
the half-a-crown charged for each issue was not only half the 
price of The Yellow Book, but well within the reach of a fairly 
numerous cultured class. That class proved unequal to the 
demand of a decadent periodical of a fine type. Neither did 
the fact of a number being banned by Messrs W. H. Smith & 
Son, because it contained a reproduction of one of William 
Blake's pictures, have any appreciable effect on its circula- 
tion ; and, finally, funds reached so low an ebb that Arthur 
Symons was forced to write the whole of the last number 
himself, and in his epilogue to his readers on the last page of 
that number he confessed to the pessimistic belief that " Com- 
paratively few people care for art at all, and most of these 
care for it because they mistake it for something else," which 
in a way is true, but not necessarily unwise on the part of the 
majority, for art, as the Nineties were beginning to learn, was 
less important than life. But that does not invalidate the 
excellence of The Savoy. 

A final attempt was made to produce a good periodical by 
the publication of The Dome, described as "A Quarterly 



PERSONALITIES AND TENDENCIES 51 

containing examples of all the Arts," at the price of one 
shilling, in 1898, two years after the death of The Savoy. 
But this quarterly never attempted to do more than repre- 
sent the various arts ; it had no guidiiig theory save excel- 
lence, with the result that it was less definite than either of its 
forerunners. It admitted good work of the past as well as 
the present, and reprinted many fine examples of ancient 
and modern wood-engraving. Notable among its modern 
illustrators were Gordon Craig and Althea Giles ; and among 
its writers, Laurence Binyon, W. B. Yeats, C. J. Holmes, 
Laurence Housman, T. W. H. Crosland, Stephen Phillips, 
Fiona Macleod, John F. Runciman, T. Sturge Moore, Francis 
Thompson, Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, Gordon Bottomley, 
Arthur Symons, Roger Fry, "Israfel," and there was also 
a translation of one of Maurice Maeterlinck's earliest stories, 
The Massacre of the Innocents. 

It will be seen from the foregoing that the art movement 
of the Eighteen Nineties found one of its most characteristic 
expressions in belles lettres. It was largely a literary renais- 
sance, exemplifying itself in poetry, drama, fiction and the 
essay. Books became once again respected for their own 
sakes ; publishers, led by John Lane, Elkin Mathews and, 
later, by J. M. Dent, competed as much in beauty and dainti- 
ness of production as in names and contents, and this book- 
ish reverence reached its highest expression in a veritable 
apotheosis of the book at the hands of William Morris of the 
Kelmscott Press and Hacon & Ricketts of the Vale Press. 
But this branch of the fine arts, although still remote from 
the average national life, was no longer remote in the old 
sense ; it did not desire academic honours, and those who 
promoted the renaissance had no idea of estabhshing a corner 
in culture. An air of freedom surrounded the movement ; 
old ideals were not the only things that suffered at the hands 
of the iconoclasts, but, as we have seen, old barriers and 
boundaries were broken down and pitched aside ; a new 
right-of-way was proclaimed, and invitations to take to it 
were scattered broadcast. It was not entirely a democratic 
movement, however, and in some of its more intense moments 



52 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

it was not at all democratic. What really happened in the 
Nineties was that doors were tlu'own open and people might 
enter and pass through into whatever lay beyond if they 
would or could, and whether they were invited or not. To 
that extent the period was democratic. Such an attitude 
was a more or less intuitive recognition of a very obvious 
awakening of intelligence which represented the first mental 
crop of the movement towards popular education. The 
Board Schools were bearing fruit ; Secondary Education 
and University Extension culture were producing a new 
inquisitiveness. Ibsen's younger generation was knocking 
at the door. The growing demand for culture w^as partially 
satisfied, in the case of those who could expect no further aid 
from the educational system, by popular reprints of the 
classics, as could be seen by the ever-growing demand for 
the volumes of The Scott Library, The Canterbury Poets and 
The Temple Classics. The mental and imaginative stimulus 
thus obtained created a hunger in many for still newer 
sensations, and many of these passed through the doors 
of the decadents or the realists into stranger realms. The 
remainder, unable to appreciate the bizarre atmosphere of 
The Yellow Book, turned with avidity to the new romantic 
literature of the Yellow Press. 

The Eighteen Nineties were to no small extent the battle- 
gi'ound of these two types of culture — the one represented by 
The Yellozv Book, the other by the Yellow Press. The one 
was unique, individual, a little weird, often exotic, demand- 
ing the right to be — in its own way even to waywardness ; 
but this was really an abnormal minority, and in no sense 
national. The other was broad, general popular ; it was 
the majority, the man-in-the-street awaiting a new medium 
of expression. In the great fight the latter won. The Yellow 
Book, with all its " new " hopes and hectic aspirations, has 
passed away, and The Daily Mail, established two years 
later, flourishes. In a deeper sense, also, these two publica- 
tions represent the two phases of the times. The character- 
istic excitability and hunger for sensation are exemplified in 
the one as much as the other, for what after all was the 



PERSONAT.TTIES AND TENDENCIES 53 

"brilliance" of Vigo Street but tlie "sensationalism" of 
Fleet Street seen from the eultured side ? Both were the 
outcome of a society which had absorbed a bigger idea of 
life than it knew how to put into practice, and it is not 
surprising to those who look back upon the period to 
find that both tendencies, in so far as they were divorced 
from the social revolution of the Nineties, were nihilistic, 
the one finding its Moscow at the Old Bailey, in 1895, the 
other in South Africa, in 1899. 

I use both terms and dates symbolically, for I am neither 
blind to the element of injustice in the condemnation of 
Oscar Wilde nor to the soul of goodness in the South African 
War. But at the moment I am dealing with main tendencies, 
and trying to give an idea-picture of a period, which was self- 
contained even in its disasters. The first half was remark- 
able for a literary and artistic renaissance, degenerating into 
decadence ; the second for a new sense of patriotism de- 
generating into jingoism. The former was in the ascendant 
during the first five years. In 1895 the literary outlook in 
England had never been brighter ; an engaging and promis- 
ing novelty full of high vitality pervaded the Press and the 
publishers' lists, and it was even commencing to invade the 
stage, when with the arrest of Oscar Wilde the whole renais- 
sance suffered a sudden collapse as if it had been no more 
than a gaily coloured balloon. " The crash of the fall 
certainly affected the whole spirit of this year," says 
R. H. Gretton, in his Modern History of the English People. 
"There were few great houses in London where he was not 
known ; fewer still where there was not among the younger 
generation an aggressive, irresponsible intolerance which had 
some relation, however vague, to his brilliant figure. Even 
athleticism rejoiced at this date to dissociate itself from any- 
thing that might have been in danger of easy approval from 
an older generation, by being too aesthetic ; captains of 
imiversity football teams had been seen with long hair. 
There was too much of real revolt in the movement to allow 
the fate of one man to hold it lastingly in check ; but a 
certain silence, almost, if not quite, shamefaced, settled for 



54 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

the moment on much of the social life of the country. " Two 
of Oscar Wilde's plays were being performed at the time, and 
they were immediately suppressed. Outside of the smoking- 
room that writer's name was scarcely whispered ; it was 
suppressed entirely in the newspapers. His books were 
allowed to go out of print, and unauthorised publishers 
pirated them, and were allowed for a time to thrive upon 
the succes de scandale attained by the books because of the 
misfortune of their author. 

With the arresting of the art movement of the Nineties 
came the chance of the man-in-the-street, whose new in- 
tellectual needs found a new caterer in Alfred Harmsworth. 
The political prejudices of the average man and his need for 
romance by proxy were exploited with phenomenal success 
by the audacious genius of the great newspaper adminis- 
trator who has since won a world-wide reputation as Lord 
Northcliffe. The Daily Mail openly fanned the Jingo flame, 
already beginning to leap aloft under the inspiration of 
Joseph Chamberlain and Cecil Rhodes, and the melodram- 
atic Jameson Raid of December 1895. Then came the 
Jubilee of 1897, when pride of race reached so unseemly a 
pitch that Rudyard Kipling even, the acknowledged poet of 
Imperialism, as the new patriotism was called, was moved to 
rebuke his compatriots : 

" //, drunk with sight of power, we loose 
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe. 

Such boastings as the Gentiles use. 
Of lesser breeds without the Law. 

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet. 

Lest we forget — lest we forget ! '■'■ 

But there was no turning back. Bitten by an unseeing 
pride, expressing itself in a strangely inorganic patriotism, 
the nation forgot art and letters and social regeneration, in 
the indulgence of blatant aspirations which reached their 
apotheosis in the orgy of Mafeking Night. 



CHAPTER III 

THE DECADENCE 

NO English writer has a better claim to recognition as 
an interpreter of the decadence in recent English 
literature than Arthur Symons. He of all the critics 
in the Eighteen Nineties was sufficiently intimate with the 
modern movement to hold, and sufficiently removed from it 
in his later attitude to express, an opinion which should be 
at once sympathetic and reasonably balanced without pre- 
tending to colourless impartiality. But during the earlier 
phase his vision of the decadent idea was certainly clearer 
than it was some years later, when he strove to differentiate 
decadence and symbolism. 

" The most representative literature of the day," he wrote 
in 1893, " the writing which appeals to, which has done so 
much to form, the younger generation, is certainly not classic, 
nor has it any relation to that old antithesis of the classic, 
the romantic. After a fashion it is no doubt a decadence ; 
it has all the qualities that mark the end of great periods, the 
qualities that we find in the Greek, the Latin, decadence ; 
an intense self-consciousness, a restless curiosity in research, 
an over-subtilising refinement upon refinement, a spiritual 
and moral perversity. If what we call the classic is indeed 
the supreme art — those qualities of perfect simplicity, perfect 
sanity, perfect proportion, the supreme qualities— then this 
representative literature of to-day, interesting, beautiful, 
novel as it is, is really a new and beautiful and interesting 
disease." ^ 

Six years later Arthur Symons, like so many of the writers 
of the period, was beginning to turn his eyes from the " new 

1 " The Decadent Movement in Literature." By Arthur Symons. 
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, November 1893. 

55 



56 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

and beautiful and interesting disease," and to look inwardly 
for spiritual consolation. In the ''Dedication" to Tlie 
Symbolist Movement in Literature lie told W. B. Yeats that 
he was " uncertainly but inevitably " finding his way towards 
that mystical acceptation of reality which had always been 
the attitude of the Irish poet. And further on in the same 
book, as though forgetting the very definite interpretation of 
decadence given by him in the article of 1893, he writes of it 
as " something which is vaguely called Decadence," a term, 
he said, used as a reproach or a defiance : 

" It pleased some young men in various countries to call 
themselves Decadents, with all the thrill of unsatisfied virtue 
masquerading as uncomprehended vice. As a matter of 
fact, the term is in its place only when applied to style, to 
that ingenious deformation of the language, in Mallarme, for 
instance, which can be compared with what we are accus- 
tomed to call the Greek and Latin of the Decadence. No 
doubt perversity of form and perversity of matter are often 
found together, and, among the lesser men especially, experi- 
ment was carried far, not only in the direction of style. But 
a movement which in this sense might be called Decadent 
could but have been a straying aside from the main road 
of literature. . . . The interlude, half a mock-interlude, of 
Decadence, diverted the attention of the critics while some- 
thing more serious was in preparation. That something 
more serious has crystallised, for the time, under the form of 
Symbolism, in which art returns to the one pathway, leading 
through beautiful things to the eternal beauty." 

In the earlier essay he certainly saw more in decadence than 
mere novelty of style, and rightly so, for style can no more 
be separated from idea than from personality. The truth of 
the matter, however, lies probably between the two views. 
What was really decadent in the Eighteen Nineties did seem 
to weed itself out into mere tricks of style and idiosyncrasies 
of sensation ; and whilst doing so it was pleased to adopt the 
term decadence, originally used as a term of reproach, as a 



THE DECADENCE 57 

badge. But with the passing of time the term has come to 
stand for a definite phase ol" artistic consciousness, and that 
phase is precisely what Arthur Symons described it to be in 
his earher article, an endeavour "to fix the last fine shade, 
the quintessence of things ; to fix it fleetingly ; to be a dis- 
embodied voice, and yet the voice of a human soul ; that is 
the ideal of Decadence. " 

The decadent movement in English art was the final out- 
come of the romantic movement which began near the dawn 
of the nineteenth century. It was the mortal ripening of 
that flower which blossomed upon the ruins of the French 
Revolution, heralding not only the rights of man, which was 
an abstraction savouring more of the classic ideal, but the 
rights of personality, of unique, varied and varying men. 
The French romanticists, led by Victor Hugo, recognised 
this in their glorification of Napoleon ; but fear and hatred 
of the great Emperor generated in the hearts of the ruling 
classes in this country and propagated among the people 
prevented the idea from gaining acceptance here. At the 
same time decadence was neither romantic nor classic ; its 
existence in so far as it was dependent upon either of those 
art traditions was dependent upon both. The decadents 
were romantic in their antagonism to current forms, but they 
were classic in their insistence upon new. And it must not 
be forgotten that far from being nihilistic in aim they always 
clung, at times with desperation, to one already established 
art-form or another. The French artists of the first revolu- 
tionary period depended as much upon the traditions of re- 
publican Greece and Rome as those of the revolution of July, 
and the poets of Britain, led by Walter Scott and Byron, 
depended upon the traditions of mediaeval feudalism. 
Romanticism was a reshuffling of ideals and ideas and a re- 
creation of forms ; it was renascent and novel. It could be 
both degenerate and regenerate, and contain at the same 
time many more contradictions, because at bottom it was 
a revolt of the spirit against formal subservience to mere 
reason. It is true that there is ultimately an explanation 
for all things, a reason for everything, but it was left for 



5S THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

romance to discover a reason for unreason. It was the 
romantic spirit in the art of Sir Walter Scott which saw no 
inconsistency between the folk-soul and the ideals of chivalry 
and nobility ; that taught Wordsworth to reveal simplicity 
as, in Oscar Wilde's words, " the last refuge of complexity " ; 
that inspired John Keats with a new classicism in Endymion 
brighter than anything since A Midsummer NighVs Dream, 
and Comus, and a new medirevalism in The Eve of St Agnes 
fairer than "all Olympus' faded hierarchy." It taught 
Shelley that the most strenuous and the most exalted indi- 
vidual emphasis was not necessarily antagonistic to a balanced 
communal feeling, and that the heart of Dionysos could throb 
and burn in the form of Apollo ; and above all it taught 
Samuel Taylor Coleridge that mystery lurked in common 
things and that mysticism was not merely a cloistral property. 
Though all of these tendencies of thought and expression 
went to the making of the decadence in England, the influ- 
ence, with the exception of that of Keats, was indirect and 
foreign. In that it was native the impulsion came directly 
from the Pre-Raphaelites, and more particularly from the 
poetry of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Swinburne. But the 
chief influences came from France, and partially for that 
reason the English decadents always remained spiritual 
foreigners in our midst ; they were not a product of England 
but of cosmopolitan London. It is certain Oscar Wilde 
(hounded out of England to die in Paris), Aubrey Beardsley 
(admittedly more at home in the brasserie of the Cafe Royale 
than elsewhere in London) and Ernest Dowson (who spent 
so much of his time in Soho) would each have felt more at 
home in Paris or Dieppe than, say, in Leeds or Margate. 
The modern decadence in England was an echo of the French 
movement which began with Theophile Gautier (who was 
really the bridge between the romanticists of the Victor Hugo 
school and the decadents who received their inspiration 
from Edmond and Jules de Goncourt), Paul Verlaine and 
Joris Karl Huysmans. In short, Gautier, favourite disciple 
of Victor Hugo, represented the consummation of the old 
romanticism, and he did this by inaugurating that new 



THE DECADENCE 59 

romanticism, which had for apostles the Parnassiens, Sym- 
bolists and Decadents. French romanticism begins with 
Hernani, and ends with Mademoiselle de Maupin. Decad- 
ence properly begins with Mademoiselle de Maupin and 
closes with A Rebours. In England it began by accident 
with Walter Pater's Studies in Art and Poetry, The Renais- 
sance, which was not entirely decadent, and it ended with 
Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray and Aubrey Beardsley's 
romance. Under the Hill, which were nothing if not decadent. 
The accident by which Pater became a decadent influence 
in English literature was due to a misapprehension of the 
precise meaning of the famous " Conclusion " to the first 
edition of the volume originally issued in 1873, which led the 
author to omit the chapter from the second edition (1877). 
" I conceived it might possibly mislead some of those young 
men into whose hands it might fall," he wrote, when he re- 
introduced it with some slight modifications, bringing it 
closer to his original meaning, into the third edition of the 
book, in 1888. Nevertheless there was sufficient material in 
the revised version to stimulate certain minds in a direction 
only very remotely connected with that austere philosophy 
of sensations briefly referred to in The Renaissance and after- 
wards developed by Walter Pater under the idea of a " New 
Cyrenaicism " in Marius the Ejncurean (1885). To those 
seeking a native sanction for their decadence, passages even 
in Marius read like invitations. " With the Cyrenaics of all 
ages, he would at least fill up the measure of that present 
with vivid sensations, and such intellectual apprehensions 
as, in strength and directness and their immediately realised 
values at the bar of an actual experience, are most like sensa- 
tions." Such passages seemed in the eyes of the decadents 
to give a perverse twist to the aesthetic Puritanism of the in- 
tellectual evolution of Marius, and to fill with a new naughti- 
ness that high discipline of exquisite tast^ to which the young 
pagan subjected himself. It is not surprising then to find 
even the revised version of the famous "'Conclusion" 
acting as a spark to the tinder of the new acceptance of 
life. 



60 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

" The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, to- 
wards the human spirit is to rouse, to startle it into sharp 
and eager observation. Every moment some form grows 
perfect in hand or iace ; some tone on the hills or the sea is 
choicer than the rest ; some mood of passion or insight or 
intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive for 
us, — for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but 
experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses 
only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may 
we see in them all that is to be seen in them by the finest 
senses ? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, 
and be present always at the focus where the greatest number 
of vital forces unite in their purest energy ? To burn always 
with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is 
success in life. In a sense it might even be said that our 
failure is to form habits ; for, after all, habit is relative to a 
stereotyped world, and meantime it is only the roughness of 
the eye that makes any two persons, things, situations, seem 
alike. While all melts under our feet, we may well catch at 
any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that 
seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, 
or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange colours 
and curious odours, or work of the artist's hands, or the face 
of one's friend. Not to discriminate every moment some 
passionate attitude in those about us, and in the brilliancy 
of their gifts some tragic dividing of forces on their ways, is, 
on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening. 
With this sense of the splendour of our experience and of its 
awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort 
to see and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories 
about the things we see and touch. What we have to do is 
to be for ever curiously testing new opinions and courting 
new impressions, never acquiescing in a facile orthodoxy of 
Comte, or of Hegel, or of our own. Philosophical theories or 
ideas, as points of view, instruments of criticism, may help 
us to gather up what might otherwise pass unregarded by us. 
' Philosophy is the microscope of thought. ' The theory or 
idea or system which requires of us the sacrifice of any part 



THE DECADENCE 61 

of this experience, in consideration of some interest into which 
we cannot enter, or some abstract theory we have not identi- 
fied with ourselves, or what is only conventional, has no real 
claim upon us." 

But misappropriation of the teaching of Walter Pater was 
only an incident in the progress of decadence in England. 
By the dawn of the last decade of the century susceptible 
thought had reverted to the original French path of decadent 
evolution which manifested itself from Theophile Gautier 
and Charles Baudelaire through the brothers Goncourt, Paul 
Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Stephane Mallarme, to Huysmans, 
with a growing tendency towards little secret raids over the 
German frontier where the aristocratic philosophy of Fried- 
rich Nietzsche was looted and made to flash approval of in- 
tentions and ideas which that philosopher, like Pater, had 
lived and worked to supersede. The publication of The 
Picture of Dorian Gray in 1891 revealed the main influence 
quite definitely, for, apart from the fact that Wilde's novel 
bears many obvious echoes of the most remarkable of French 
decadent novels, the A Rebours of J. K. Huysmans, which 
Arthur Symons has called " the breviary of the decadence," 
it contains the following passage which, although A Rebours 
is not named, is generally understood to refer to that book, 
even if the fact were not otherwise obvious : — 

" His eyes fell on the yellow book that Lord Henry had 
sent him. What was it, he wondered. He went towards 
the little pearl-coloured octagonal stand, that had always 
looked to him like the work of some strange Egyptian bees 
that wrought in silver, and taking up the volume, flung him- 
self into an arm-chair, and began to turn over the leaves. 
After a few minutes he became absorbed. 

" It was the strangest book he had ever read. It seemed 
to hmi that in exquisite raiment, and to the delicate sound 
of flutes, the sins of the world were passing in dumb show 
before him. Things that he had dimly dreamed of were 
suddenly made real to him. Things of which he had never 
dreamed were gradually revealed. 



62 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

" It was a novel without a plot, and with only one char- 
acter, being, indeed, simply a psychological study of a certain 
young Parisian who spent his life tr3ang to realise in the 
nineteenth century all the passions and modes of thought 
that belonged to every century except his own, and to sum 
up, as it were, in himself the various moods through which 
the world-spirit had ever passed, loving for their mere arti- 
ficiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called 
virtue as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still 
call sin. The style in which it was written was that curious 
jewelled style, vivid and obscure at once, full of ai'got and of 
archaisms, of technical expressions and of elaborate para- 
phrases, that characterises the w^ork of some of the finest 
artists of the French school of symbolists. There were in it 
metaphors as monstrous as orchids and as evil in colour. 
The life of the senses was described in the terms of mystical 
philosophy. One hardly knew at times M'hether one was 
reading the spiritual ecstasies of some mediaeval saint or the 
morbid confessions of a modern sinner. It was a poisonous 
book. The heavy odour of incense seemed to cling about its 
pages and to trouble the brain. The mere cadence of the 
sentences, the subtle monotony of their music, so full as it 
was of complex refrains and movements elaborately repeated, 
produced in the mind of the lad, as he passed from chapter to 
chapter, a form of reverie, a malady of dreaming, that made 
him unconscious of the falling day and the creeping shadows. " 

This book so revealed Dorian Gray to himself that he be- 
came frankly the Due Jean des Esseintes of English litera- 
ture. There are differences, to be sure, and the sensations 
and ideas of Dorian Gray are not elaborated so scientific- 
ally as those of des Esseintes, but there is something 
more than coincidence in the resemblance of their attitudes 
towards life. 

Jean des Esseintes and Dorian Gray are the authentic 
decadent types. Extreme they are, as a matter of course, but 
their prototypes did exist in real life, and minus those m- 
cidents wherein extreme decadence expresses itself in serious 



II 



THE DECADENCE 63 

crime, such as murder or incitement to murder, those 
prototypes had recognisable corporeal being. 

In the Eighteen Nineties two such types were Oscar 
Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley, each of whom approximated, 
if not in action, then in mind and idea to des Esseintes 
and Dorian Gray. There was in both a typical perversity 
of thought, which in Wilde's case led to a contravention of 
morality evoking the revenge of society and a tragic ending to 
a radiant career. Both preferred the artificial to the natural. 
"The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible," said 
Oscar Wilde, adding, " what the second duty is no one has 
as yet discovered." The business of art as he understood it 
was to put Nature in her proper place. To be natural was to 
be obvious, and to be obvious was to be inartistic. Aubrey 
Beardsley invented a new artificiality in black and white art, 
and in his romance, Voider the Hill, only a carefully expur- 
gated edition of which has been made generally accessible to 
the public, he created an A Rcbours of sexuality. And both 
possessed an exaggerated curiosity as to emotional and other 
experiences combined with that precocity which is character- 
istic of all decadents. The curiosity and precocity of the 
decadence were revealed in an English writer before the 
Eighteen Nineties by the publication, in 1886, of the Con- 
fessions of a Young Man, by George Moore ; but apart from 
the fact that the author who shocked the moral suscepti- 
bilities of the people who control lending libraries, with 
Esther Waters, loved the limelight and passed through en- 
thusiasms for all modern art movements, he was as far re- 
moved from the typical decadent as the latter is removed 
from the average smoking-room citizen who satisfies an age- 
long taste for forbidden fruit with a risque story. George 
Moore played at decadence for a little while, but the real in- 
fluences of his life were Flaubert and the naturalists on the 
one side, and their corollaries in the graphic arts, Manet and 
the impressionists, on the other. For the rest he insisted 
upon England accepting the impressionists; abandoned 
realism ; introduced into this country the work of Verlaine 
and Rimbaud, and the autobiography of indiscretion ; flirted 



64 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

with the Irish Literary Movement, and its vague mysticism 
— and remained George Moore. 

The chief characteristics of the decadence were (1) Per- 
versity, (2) Ai'tificiahty, (3) Egoism and (4) Curiosity, 
and these characteristics are not at all inconsistent with a 
sincere desire " to find the last fine shade, the quintessence 
of things ; to fix it fleetingly ; to be a disembodied voice, 
and yet the voice of a human soul." Indeed, when wrought 
into the metal of a soul impelled to adventure at whatever 
hazard, for sheer love of expanding the boundaries of human 
experience and knowledge and power, these characteristics 
become, as it were, the senses by which the soul may test 
the flavour and determine the quality of its progress. In that 
light they are not decadent at all, they are at one with all 
great endeavour since the dawn of human consciousness. 
What, after all, is human consciousness when compared with 
Nature but a perversity — ^the self turning from Nature to 
contemplate itself ? And is not civilisation artifice's con- 
spiracy against what is uncivilised and natural ? As for 
egoism, we ought to have learnt by this time that it is not 
sufficient for a being to say " I am." He is not a factor in 
life until he can add to that primal affirmation a consum- 
mating "I will." "To be" and "to will" exercised 
together necessitate action, which in turn involves experi- 
ence, and experience, not innocence, is the mother of curiosity. 
Not even a child has curiosity until it has experienced some- 
thing ; all inquisitiveness is in the nature of life asking for 
more, and all so-called decadence is civilisation rejecting, 
through certain specialised persons, the accumulated experi- 
ences and sensations of the race. It is a demand for wider 
ranges, newer emotional and spiritual territories, fresh woods 
and pastures new for the soul. If you will, it is a fonn of 
imperialism of the spirit, ambitious, arrogant, aggressive, 
wa\'ing the flag of human power over an ever wider and 
wider territory. And it is interesting to recollect that de- 
cadent art periods have often coincided with such waves of 
imperial patriotism as passed over the British Empire and 
various European countries during the Eighteen Nineties. 



THE DECADENCE 65 

It is, of course, permissible to say that such outbreaks of 
curiosity and expansion are the result of decay, a sign of a 
world gi-own hlase, tired, played-out ; but it should not be 
forgotten that the effort demanded by even the most ill- 
du-ected phases of decadent action suggests a hveliness of 
energy which is quite contrary to the traditions of senile 
decay. During the Eighteen Nineties such liveliness was 
obvious to all, and even in its decadent phases the period 
possessed tonic qualities. But the common-sense of the 
matter is that where the so-called decadence made for a fuller 
and brighter life, demanding ever more and more power and 
keener sensibilities from its units, it was not decadent. The 
decadence was decadent only when it removed energy from 
the common life and set its eyes in the ends of the earth 
whether those ends were pictures, blue and white china, or 
colonies. True decadence was therefore degeneration aris- 
ing not out of senility, for there is nothing old under the sun, 
but out of surfeit, out of the ease with which life was main- 
tained and desires satisfied. To kill a desire, as you can, 
by satisfying it, is to create a new desu'c. The decadents 
always did that, with the result that they demanded of life 
not repetition of old but opportunities for new experiences. 
The whole attitude of the decadence is contained in Ernest 
Dowson's best-known poem : "Non sum quahs eram bonai 
sub regno Cynarae," with that insatiate demand of a soul 
surfeited with the food that nourishes not, and finding what 
relief it can in a rapture of desolation : 

" I cried for madder music and for stronger wine. 
But when the feast is finished, and the lamps expire. 
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara ! the night is thine ; ' 
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion. 
Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire : 
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara ! in my fashion ! " 

In that poem we have a sort of parable of the decadent 
sold. Cynara is a symbol of the unattained and perhaps un- 
attainable joy and peace which is the eternal dream of man. 
The decadents of the Nineties, to do them justice, were not so 



66 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

degenerate as either to have lost hope in future joy or to have 
had full faith in their attainment of it. Coming late in a 
century of material pressure and scientific attainment they 
embodied a tired mood, rejected hope, beyond the moment, 
and took a subtle joy in playing with fire and calling it sin ; 
in scourging themselves for an unholy delight, in tasting the 
bitter-sweet of actions potent with remorse. They loved 
the cleanliness in unclean things, the sweetness in unsavoury 
alliances ; they did not actually kiss Cynara, they kissed 
her by the proxy of some " bought red mouth." It was as 
though they had grown tired of being good, in the old accepted 
way, they wanted to experience the piquancy of being good 
after a debauch. They realised that a merited kiss was not 
half so sweet as a kiss of forgiveness, and this subtle voluptu- 
ousness eventually taught them that the road called de- 
cadence also led to Rome. The old romanticism began by 
being Catholic ; Theophile Gautier strove to make it pagan, 
and succeeded for a time, but with Huysmans romanticism 
in the form of decadence reverted to Rome. In England 
the artists who represented the renaissance of the Nineties 
were either Cathohcs like Francis Thompson and Henry 
Harland or prospective converts to Rome, like Oscar Wilde, 
Aubrey Beardsley, Lionel Johnson and Ernest Dowson. If 
Catholicism did not claim them some other form of mysti- 
cism did, and W. B. Yeats and George Russell (A.E.) became 
Theosophists. The one who persistently hardened himself 
against the mystical influences of his period, John Davidson, 
committed suicide. ^ 

The general public first realised the existence of the 
decadence with the arrest and trial of Oscar Wilde, and, 
collecting its wits and its memories of The Yellow Book, 
the drawings of Aubrey Beardsley, and the wilful and 
perverse epigrams of A Woman of No Importance, it shook 
its head knowingly and intimated that this sort of thing 
must be stopped. And the suddenness with which the de- 
cadent movement in English literature and art ceased, from 
that time, proves, if it proves nothing else, the tremendous 
power of outraged public opinion in this country. But it 



THE DECADENCE 67 

also proves that English thought and English morality, how- 
ever superficial on the one hand and however hypocritical 
on the other, would neither understand nor tolerate the 
curious exotic growth which had flowered in its midst. 

The passing of the decadence in England had been pre- 
pared by the satires of Robert Hichens and G. S. Street, in 
The Green Carnation and The Autobiography of a Boy, just as 
its earlier phase, the ^Esthetic Movement, had been laughed 
out of any popularity it might have won by W. H. Malloek 
in The New Rejjublic, W. S. Gilbert in Patience, and by George 
du Maurier in a famous series of humorous drawings in Punch. 
The weakness of The Green Carnation is that satire sails so 
perilously near reality as, at times, to lose itself in a wave of 
fact. At times the book reads more like an indiscretion than 
a satire, but no other writer has realised so well the fatuous 
side of the " exquisite " and " brilliant " corner in decadence 
which Oscar Wilde made his own : 

" ' Oh ! he has not changed,' said Mr Amarinth. ' That 
is so wonderful. He never develops at ail. He alone under- 
stands the beauty of rigidity, the exquisite severity of the 
statuesque nature. Men always fall into the absurdity of 
endeavouring to develop the mind, to push it violently for- 
ward in this direction or in that. The mind should be recep- 
tive, a harp waiting to catch the Avinds, a pool ready to be 
ruffled, not a bustling busybody, for ever trotting about on 
the pavement looking for a new bun shop. It should not 
deliberately run to seek sensations, but it should never avoid 
one ; it should never be afraid of one ; it should never put 
one aside from an absurd sense of right and wrong. Every 
sensation is valuable. Sensations are the details that build 
up the stories of our lives. ' 

" ^ But if we do not choose our sensations carefully, the 
stories may be sad, may even end tragically,' said Lady 
Locke. 

'' 'Oh ! I don't think that matters at all, do you, Mrs 
Windsor ? ' said Reggie. ' If we choose carefully, we become 
deliberate at once ; and nothing is so fatal to personality 



68 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

as deliberation. When I am good, it is my mood to be 
good ; when I am what is called wicked, it is my mood to be 
evil. I never know what I shall be at a particular moment. 
Sometimes I like to sit at home after dinner and read The 
Dream ofGerontius. I love lentils and cold water. At other 
times I must drink absinthe, and hang the night hours with 
scarlet embroideries. I must have music, and the sins that 
march to music. There are moments when I desire squalor, 
sinister, mean surroundings, dreariness and misery. The 
great unwashed mood is upon me. Then I go out from 
luxury. The mind has its West End and its Whitechapel. 
The thoughts sit in the park sometimes, but sometimes they 
go slumming. They enter narrow courts and rookeries. 
They rest in unimaginable dens seeking contrast, and they 
like the ruffians whom they meet there, and they hate the 
notion of policemen keeping order. The mind governs the 
body. I never know how I shall spend an evening till 
the evening has come. I wait for my mood. ' " 

There is satire so guarded, and lacking just so very dainty 
a touch of humour, that the uninitiated might miss the point. 
But that cannot be said of the more humorous touch of the 
author of The Autobiography of a Boy. Esme Amarinth and 
Lord Reginald Hastings are cold, satirical echoes of Lord 
Henry Wotton and Dorian Gray, or such prototypes as they 
may have had in actuality ; but the delightful Tubby of the 
autobiography is an unforgettably comic exaggeration which 
might laugh the veriest and most convinced of decadents 
back to sanity. The introduction to the reader is masterly 
in its sly humour. 

" He was expelled from two private and one public school ; 
but his private tutor gave him an excellent character, prov- 
ing that the rough and ready methods of schoolmasters' 
appreciation were unsuited to the fineness of his nature. As 
a young boy he was not remarkable for distinction of the 
ordinary sort — at his prescribed studies and at games involv- 
ing muscular strengtli and activity. But in very early life 



THE DECADENCE 69 

the infinite indulgence of his smile was famous, and as in after 
years was often misunderstood ; it was even thought by his 
schoolfellows that its effect at a crisis in his career was largely 
responsible for the rigour with Avhich he was treated by the 
authorities ; ' they were not men of the world, ' was the 
harshest comment he himself was ever known to make on 
them. He spoke with invariable kindness also of the dons 
at Oxford (who sent him down in his third year), complaining 
only that they had not absorbed the true atmosphere of the 
place, which he loved. He was thought eccentric there, and 
was well known only in a small and very exclusive set. But 
a certain amount of general popularity was secured to him bj'' 
the disfavour of the powers, his reputation for wickedness, 
and the supposed magnitude of his debts. His theory of life 
also compelled him to be sometimes drunk. In his first year 
he was a severe ritualist, in his second an anarchist and an 
atheist, in his third wearily indifferent to all things, in which 
attitude he remained for the two years since he left the 
university until now when he is gone from us. His humour 
of being carried in a sedan chair, swathed in blankets and 
reading a Latin poet, from his rooms to the Turkish bath, is 
still remembered in college. " 

TJie Autobiography of a Boy is not, like The Green Carna- 
tion, a satire upon the leaders of the decadence ; it is a satire 
upon the innumerable hangers-on to the movement — who 
were perhaps the only real degenerates. Perhaps the Tubby 
type will be always with us, and so long as we have our 
dominions beyond the seas, to which irate fathers may pack 
them, all may be well, especially if they depart with such 
superbly futile resolves as this Tubby made on the eve of his 
emigration to Canada. " My father," he writes towards the 
close of his autobiogi-aphy, " spoke of an agent whom I was 
to see on my arrival ; I think he wants me to go into a bank 
out there. But I shall make straight for the forests, or the 
mountains, or whatever they are, and try to forget. I be- 
lieve people shoot one another there ; I have never killed a 
nmn, and it may be an experience — the lust for slaughter. 



70 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

They dress picturesquely ; probably a red sash will be the 
keynote of my scheme." 

The decadence proper, in this country, was only one of the 
expressions of the liveliness of the times. It was the mood 
of a minority, and of a minorit}^ perhaps, that was concerned 
more about its own moods than about the meaning of life 
and the use of life. At its worst it was degenerate in the 
literal sense — that is to say, weak, invalid, hectic, trotting 
with rather sad joy into the cul de sac of conventional wicked- 
ness and peacocking itself with fme phrases and professions 
of whimsical daring. As such it was open to satire ; as such 
it would have suppressed itself sooner or later without the 
intervention of public opinion. At its best, even when that 
best was most artificial and most exotic, it realised much, if 
it accomplished little. True it was a movement of elderl}'^ 
youths who wrote themselves out in a slender volume or so 
of hot verse or ornate prose, and slipped away to die in 
taverns or gutters — but some of those verses and that prose 
are woven into the fabric of English literature. And if it 
was a movement always being converted, or on the point of 
being converted, to the most permanent form of Christianity, 
even though its reasons were jcsthetic, or due entirely to a 
yearning soul-weariness, it succeeded in checking a brazen 
rationalism which was beginning to haunt art and life with 
the cold shadow of logic. Ernest Dowson's cry for " Madder 
music and for stronger wine," Arthur Symons' assertion that 
" there is no necessary difference in artistic value between a 
good poem about a flower in the hedge and a good poem 
about the scent in a sachet," and Oscar Wilde's re-assertion 
of Gautier's Vart pour Vart (with possibilities undreamt of by 
Gautier) are all something more than mere protests against 
a stupid Philistinism ; fundamentally they are expressions 
not so much of art as of vision, and as such nothing less than 
a demand for that uniting ecstasy which is the essence of 
human and every other phase of life. All the cynicisms 
and petulances and flippancies of the decadence, the febrile 
self-assertion, the voluptuousness, the perversity were, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, efforts towards the rehabilitation 



THE DECADENCE 71 

of spiritual power. "I see, indeed," wrote W. B. Yeats, 
" in the arts of every country those faint hghts and faint 
colours and faint outlines and faint energies which many 
call 'the decadence,' and which I, because I believe that 
the arts lie dreaming of things to come, prefer to call the 
autumn of the body. An Irish poet, whose rhythms are 
like the cry of a sea-bird in autumn twilight, has told its 
meaning in the line, ' the very sunhght's weary, and it's 
time to quit the plough.' Its importance is great because 
it comes to us at the moment when we are beginning to be 
interested in many things which positive science, the inter- 
preter of exterior law, has always denied : communion of 
mind with mind in thought and without words, foreknow- 
ledge in dreams and in visions, and the coming among us of 
the dead, and of much else. We are, it may be, at a crown- 
ing crisis of the world, at the moment when man is about to 
ascend, with the wealth he has been so long gathering upon 
his shoulders, the stairway he has been descending from 
the first days." So it may be that this movement, which 
accepted as a badge the reproach of decadence, is the first 
hot flush of the only ascendant moveinent of our times ; 
and that the strange and bizarre artists who lived tragic 
lives and made tragic end of their lives, are the mad priests 
of that new romanticism whose aim was the transmutation 
of vision into personal power. 



CHAPTER IV 

OSCAR WILDE : THE LAST PHASE 

THE singularity of Oscar Wilde has puzzled writers 
since his death quite as much as it puzzled the public 
during the startled years of his wonderful visit to 
these glimpses of Philistia ; for after all that has been ^vritten 
about him we are no nearer a convincing interpretation of 
his character than we were during the great silence which im- 
mediately followed his trial and imprisonment, Robert H, 
Sherard's Oscar Wilde : The Story of an Unhajjpy Friend- 
ship, throws the clear light of sincerity and eloquence upon 
his own and his subject's capacity for friendship, but little 
more than that ; Andre Gide has created a delightful, liter- 
ary miniature which must always hang on the line in any 
gallery of studies of Oscar Wilde, but his work is portraiture 
rather than interpretation. For the rest, we have to be con- 
tent with such indications of character as may be obtained 
from the numerous critical essays which have been published 
during the last few years, notable among them being Arthur 
Ransome's fine study, and the always wise commentations 
of Wilde's literary executor and editor, Robert Ross, and 
the notes and collectanea of Stuart Mason. But M'hatever 
ultimate definition his character may assume in future 
biography, and however difficult such definition may be, it 
is not so hard to define Oscar Wilde's position and influence 
during the last decade of the nineteenth century, and what 
proved to be as well the last decade of his own life. 

In the year 1889 Oscar Wilde might have passed away 
without creating any further comment than that which is 
accorded an eccentric poet who has succeeded in drawing 
attention to himself and his work by certain audacities of 
costume and opinion. His first phase was over, and he had 

72 




Oscar Wilde (1895) 

From the F/iato^ra/'/i hy Ellis 5^ // 'n'ciy 



i 



■ 




OSCAR WILDE : THE LAST PHASE 73 

become an out-moded apostle of an sestheticism which had 
already taken the place of a whimsically remembered fad, a 
fad ^A-liich, even then, almost retained its only significance 
tiiiongh the medium of Gilbert and Sullivan's satirical opera. 
Patience. He was the man who had evoked merriment by 
announcing a desire to live up to his blue-and-white china ; 
he was the man who had created a sort of good-humoured 
indignation by expressing displeasure with the Atlantic 
Ocean: "I am not exactly pleased with the Atlantic," he 
had confessed. "It is not so majestic as I expected"; 
and whose later dissatisfaction with Niagara Falls convinced 
the United States of America of his flippancy : "I was dis- 
appointed with Niagara. Most people must be disappointed 
with Niagara. Everj-^ American bride is taken there, and 
the sight of the stupendous waterfall must be one of the 
earliest it' not the keenest disappointments in American 
married life." These sayings were beginning to be re- 
membered dimly, along with the picturesque memories of a 
plum-coloured velveteen knickerbocker suit and a famous 
stroll down Bond Street as a form of aesthetic propaganda 
by example. This memory also was aided by VV. S. Gilbert : 

" If you walk doivn Piccadilly 
With a poppy or a lily 

In your niediceval hand. . . ."■ 

But certain encoimters with Whistler, in which Oscar 
Wilde felt the sting of the Butterfly, were remembered more 
distinctly and with more satisfaction, with the result that, 
besides being outmoded, he became soiled by the charge of 
plagiarism. "I wish I liad said that," he remarked once, 
approving of one of Whistler's witticisms. " You ^\'ill, 
Oscar ; you will ! " was the reply. And still more emphatic, 
the great painter had said on another occasion : " Oscar has 
the courage of the opinions ... of others ! " Tlie fact was 
that the brilliant Oxford graduate had not yet fulfilled the 
promise of his youth, of his first book, and of his own witty 
audacity. He had achieved notoriety without fame, and 
literary reputation without a sufficient means of livelihood, 



74 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

and so small was his position in letters that, from 1887 to 
1889, we find him eking out a living by editing The Woman's 
World for Messrs Cassell & Co. 

His successes during this period were chiefly in the realms 
of friendship, and of this the public knew nothing. Publiclj' 
he was treated with amiable contempt : he was a social 
jester, an intellectual buffoon, a poseur ; food for the self- 
righteous laughter of the Philistines ; fair quarry for the wits 
of Punch, who did not miss their chance. Yet during the 
very years he was controlling editorial destinies which were 
more than foreign to his genius, he was taking the final pre- 
paratory steps towards the attractive and sometimes splendid 
literary outburst of his last decade. During 1885 and 1890 
his unripe genius was feeling its way ever surer and surer 
towards that mastery of technique and increasing thought- 
fulness which afterwards displayed themselves. This was 
a period of transition and co-ordination. Oscar Wilde was 
evolving out of one hizarrerie and passing into another. And 
in this evolution he was not only shedding plumes borrowed 
from Walter Pater, Swinburne and Whistler, he was retain- 
ing such of them as suited his needs and making them 
definitely his own. But, further than that, he was shedding 
his purely British masters and allowing himself to fall more 
directly under the influence of a new set of masters in France, 
where he was always at home, and where he had played the 
" sedulous ape " to Balzac some years earlier. From time 
to time during these years he had polished and engraved and 
added to the luxuriant imagery of that masterpiece of baroque 
poetry, The Sphinx, which was published in 1894 in a 
beautiful format with decorations by Charles Ricketts. 
Essays like " The Truth of Masks " and " Shakespeare and 
Stage Costume " appeared in the pages of The Nineteenth 
Century in 1885 ; in other publications appeared such stories 
as " The Sphinx without a Secret," " The Canterville Ghost " 
and "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime," and in 1888 he issued 
The Happy Prince and Other Tales. "Pen, Pencil and 
Poison " appeared in The Fortnightly Review in 1889, and in 
the same year The Nineteenth Century published the first of 



OSCAR WILDE : THE LAST PHASE 75 

his two great colloquies, The Decay of Lying. In all of these 
stories and essays his style was conquering its weaknesses 
and achieving the undeniable distinction which made him 
the chief force of the renaissance of the early Nineties. In 
1890 his finest colloquy, " The Critic as Artist," appeared in 
The Nineteenth Century. Several of the above-named essays 
and tales went to the making of two of his most important 
books, The House of Pomegranates and Intentions, both of 
which appeared in the first year of the Nineties, and in the 
same year he published in book form the complete version 
of The Picture of Dorian Gray, thirteen chapters of which 
had appeared serially in LippincoiVs Monthly Magazine in 
the previous year. 

Thus, with the dawn of the Eighteen Nineties, Oscar Wilde 
came into his own. The House of Pomegranates alone was 
sufficient to establish his reputation as an artist, but the 
insouciant attitude of the paradoxical philosopher revealed 
in The Picture of Dm'ian Gray and Intentions stung waning 
interest in the whilom apostle of beauty to renewed activit}'. 
Shaking off the astonishing reputation which had won him 
early notoriety as the posturing advertiser of himself by 
virtue of the ideas of others, he arose co-ordinate and re- 
splendent, an individual and an influence. He translated 
himself out of a subject for anecdote into a subject for dis- 
cussion. And whilst not entirely abandoning that art of 
personality which had brought him notoriety as a conversa- 
tionalist and dandy in salon and drawing-room and at the 
dinner- table, he transmuted the personality thus cultivated 
into the more enduring art of literature, and that brought 
him fame of which notorietj^ is but the base metal. For 
many years he had looked to the theatre as a further means 
of expression and financial gain, and he had tried his 'prentice 
hand on the drama with Vera : or the Nihilists in 1882, which 
was produced unsuccessfully in America in 1883, and with 
The Duchess of Padua, written for Mary Anderson and re- 
jected by her about the same time, and produced without 
encouraging results in New York in 1891. There were also 
two other early plays, A Florentine Tragedy, a fragment only 



76 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

of which remains, and The Woman Covered with Jewels, which 
seems to have been entirely lost. The failure of these works 
to make any sort of impression involves no reflection on the 
public, as they are the veriest stuff of the beginner and imi- 
tator ; echoes of Sardou and Scribe ; romantic costume plays 
inspired by the theatre rather than by life, and possessing 
none of the signs of that skilled craftsmanship upon which 
the merely stage-carpentered play must necessarily depend. 
But with that change in the whole trend of his genius which 
heralded the first year of the Nineties came a change also in 
his skill as a playwright. In 1891 he wrote Salome in French, 
afterwards translated into English by Lord Alfred Douglas 
and published by the Bodley Head, with illustrations by 
Aubrey Beardsle}^, in 1894. This play would have been pro- 
duced at the Palace Theatre in 1892 with Madame Sarah 
Bernhardt in the cast, had not the censor intervened. Oscar 
Wilde achieved his first dramatic success with Lady Winder- 
7nere\<i Fan, produced by George Alexander at the St James's 
Theatre, on 20th February 1892. The success was immedi- 
ate. Next year Herbert Beerbohm Tree produced A Woman 
of No Importance at the Haymarket Theatre before e\^en 
more enthusiastic audiences. In 1895 An Ideal Husband was 
produced at the same theatre in January, and, in February, 
The Importance of Being Earnest was produced at the 
St James's. 

Oscar Wilde had now reached the age of forty-one and the 
height of his fame and power. " The man who can dominate 
a London dinner-table can dominate the world," he had said. 
He had dominated many a Ivondon dinner-table ; he now 
dominated the London stage. He was a monarch in his own 
sphere, rich, famous, popular ; looked up to as a master by 
the younger generation, courted by the fashionable world, 
loaded with commissions by theatrical managers, inter- 
viewed, paragraphed and pictured by tlie Press, and envied 
by the envious and the incompetent. All the flattery and 
luxury of success were his, and his luxuriant and applause- 
loving nature appeared to revel in the glittering surf of con- 
quest like a joyous bather in a sunny sea. But it was only 



OSCAR WILDE : THE LAST PHASE 77 

a partial victory. The apparent capitulation of the upper 
and middle classes was illusory, and even the man in the 
street who heard about him and wondered was moved by an 
uneasy suspicion that all was not well. For, in spite of the 
flattery and the amusement, Oscar Wilde never succeeded 
in winning popular respect. His intellectual playfulness 
destroyed popular faith in his sincerity, and the British 
people have still to learn that one can be as serious in one's 
play with ideas as in one's play with a football. The danger 
of his position was all the more serious because those who 
were ready to laugh with him were never tired of laughing at 
him. This showed that lack of confidence which is the most 
fertile ground of suspicion, and Wilde was always suspected 
in this country even before the rumours which culminated 
in his trial and imprisonment began to fdter through the 
higher strata of society to the lower. It sufficed that he 
was strange and clever and seemingly liappy and indilferent 
to public opinion. This popular suspicion is sununarised 
clearly, and with the sort of disrespect from which he never 
escaped even in his hour of triumph, in an article in Pearson's 
Weekly for 27th May 1893, A\Titten immediately after the 
success of Lady Windermere's Fan and A Woman of No 
Imjyortance : 

" Where he does excel is in affectation. His mode of life, 
his manner of speech, his dress, his views, his work, are all 
masses of affectation. Affectation has become a second 
natiu'c to him, and it would probably now be utterly im- 
possible for him to revert to the original Oscar that lies be- 
neath it all. In fact, probably none of his friends have ever 
had an opportunity of finding out what manner of man the 
real Oscar is. . . . So long as he remains an amiable eccen- 
tricity and the producer of amusing trifles, however, one 
cannot be seriously angry with him. So far, it has never 
occurred to any reasonable person to take him seriously, and 
the storms of ridicule to which he has exposed himself have 
prevented his becoming a real nuisance. For the present, 
however, we may content om'selves with the reflection that 



78 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

there is no serious danger to be apprehended to the State 
from the vagaries of a butterfly." 

The above may be taken as a fair example of the attitude 
of the popular Press towards Oscar Wilde, and the same 
sentiments were expressed, varying only in degrees of literary 
polish, in many directions, even at a time when the new spirit 
of comedy he had introduced into the British theatre was 
giving unbounded delight to a vast throng of fashionable 
playgoers ; for these plays had not to create audiences for 
themselves, like the plays of Bernard Shaw ; they were im- 
mediately acclaimed, and Wilde at once took rank with 
popular playwrights like Sydney Grundy and Pinero. 

There were of course many who admired him ; and he 
always inspired friendship among his intimates. All who 
have written of him during his earlier period and during the 
early days of his triumph refer to his joyous and resplendent 
personality, his fine scholarship, his splendid manners and 
conversational gifts, his good humour and his lavish generosity. 
Andre Gide gives us many glimpses of Wilde both before and 
after his downfall, one of which reveals him as table-talker : 

" I had heard him talked about at Stephane Mallarme's 
house, where he was described as a brilliant conversationalist, 
and I expressed a wish to know him, little hoping that I 
should ever do so. A happy chance, or rather a friend, gave 
me the opportunity, and to him I made known my desire. 
Wilde was invited to dinner. It was at a restaurant. We 
were a party of four, but three of us were content to listen. 
W^ilde did not converse — he told tales. During the whole 
meal he hardly stopped. He spoke in a slow, musical 
tone, and his very voice was wonderful. He knew French 
almost perfectly, but pretended, now and then, to hesitate 
for a word to which he w^anted to call our attention. He 
had scarcely any accent, at least only what it pleased him 
to affect when it might give a somewhat new or strange 
appearance to a word — for instance, he used purposely to 
pronounce scepticisme as skepticisme. The stories he told us 
without a break that evening were not of his best. Uncertain 



OSCAR WILDE : THE LAST PHASE 79 

of his audience, he was testing us, for, in his wisdom, or 
perhaps in his folly, he never betrayed himself into saying 
anything which he thought would not be to the taste of his 
hearers ; so he doled out food to each according to his appe- 
tite. Those who expected nothing from him got nothing, or 
only a little light froth, and as at first he used to give himself 
up to the task of amusing, many of those who thought they 
knew him will have known him only as the amuser." 

With the progress of his triumph as a successful playwright, 
his friends observed a coarsening of his appearance and 
character, and he lost his powers of conversation. Robert II. 
Sherard met him during the Cliristmas season of 1894 and 
described his appearance as bloated. His face seemed to 
have lost its spiritual beauty, and he was oozing with material 
prosperity. At this time serious rumours about his private 
life and habits became more persistent in both London and 
Paris, and countenance was lent to them by the publication 
of The Green Carnation, which, although making no direct 
charge, hinted at strange sins, Oscar Wilde knew that his 
conduct must lead to catastrophe, although many of his 
friends believed in his innocence to the end. Andre Gide 
met him in Algiers just before the catastrophe happened. 
Wilde explained that he was fleeing from art : 

" He spoke of returning to London, as a well-known peer 
was insulting him, challenging him, and taunting him with 
running away. 

" ' But if you go back what will happen ? ' I asked him. 
' Do you know the risk you are running ? ' 

" 'It is best never to know,' he answered. 'My friends 
are extraordinary — they beg me to be careful. Careful ? 
But how can I be careful ? That would be a backward step. 
I must go on as far as possible. I cannot go nmch further. 
Something is bound to happen . . . something else.' 

" Here he broke off, and the next day he left for England. " 

Almost immediately after his arrival he brought an action 
for criminal libel against the Marquis of Queensberry and. 



80 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

upon losing the case, was arrested, and charged under the 
11th Section of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, and 
sentenced to two jcars' penal servitude. During his im- 
prisonment he wrote De Profundis, in the form of a long 
letter, addressed but not delivered, to Lord Alfred Douglas, 
a part of which was published in 1905, and after his release 
he wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol, published, under a 
pseudonym, " C. 3. 3." (his prison number), by Leonard 
Smithers, and he contributed two letters on the conditions 
of prison life, " The Cruelties of Prison Life," and " Don't 
Read this if you Want to be Happy To-day," to TJie Daily 
Chronicle in 1897 and 1898. These were his last writings. 

After leaving prison he lived for a while, under the assumed 
name of " Sebastian Melmoth," at the Hotel de la Plage, and 
later at the Villa Bourget, Berncval-sur-Mer, near Dieppe, 
where he wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol, and the prison 
letters, and where he contemplated writing a play called 
Ahab and Jezebel. This play he hoped would be his passport 
to the world again. But a new restlessness overcame him, 
and all his good resolutions tui'ned to dust. For a while he 
travelled, visiting Italy, the south of France and Switzer- 
land, eventually settling in Paris, where he died, in poverty 
and a penitent Catholic, on 30th November 1900. He was 
buried in the Bagneux Cemetery, but on 20th July 1909 his 
remains were removed to Pere Lachaise. 

It is too soon, perhaps, even now, to set a final value upon 
the work of Oscar Wilde. Time, although not an infallible 
critic, is already winnowing the chaff from the grain, and 
almost with the passing of each year we are better able to 
recognise the more permanent essences of his literary re- 
mains. It is inevitable in his case, where the glamour of 
personality added so significantly to the character of his 
work, that Time should insist upon being something more 
than a casual arbiter. In proof of this the recollection 
of so much futile criticism of Wilde cannot be overlooked. 
Both the man and his work have suffered depreciations 
which amount to defamation, and appraisals which can only 
be described as silly. But finally he would seem in many 



OSCAR WILDE : THE LAST PHASE 81 

instances to have suffered more at the hands of his friends 
than his enemies. There have been, to be sme, several wise 
estimations of his genius, even in this country, notably those 
of Arthur Ransome and the not altogether unprovocative 
essay of Arthur Symons, entitled " An Artist in Attitudes " ; 
and the various prefaces and notes contributed by Robert 
Ross to certain of the volumes in the complete edition of the 
works are, of course, of great value. But, as the incidents 
associated with the life and times of Wilde recede further 
into the background of the mental picture which inevitably 
forms itself about any judgment of his work, we shall be able 
to obtain a less biased view. Even then, our perspective 
may be wrong, for this difficulty of personality is not only 
dominant, but it may be essential. 

The personality of Oscar Wilde, luxuriant, piquant and 
insolent as it was, is sufficiently emphatic to compel attention 
so long as interest in his ideas or his works survives. Indeed, 
it may never be quite possible to separate such a man from 
such work. It is certainly impossible to do so now. With 
many writers, perhaps the majority, it requires no effort to 
forget the author in the book, because literature has effectu- 
ally absorbed personality, or all that was distinctive of the 
author's personality. With Oscar Wilde it is otherwise. 
His books can never be the abstract and brief chronicles of 
himself ; for, admittedly on his part, and recognisably on 
the part of others, he put even more distinction into his life 
than he did into his art. Not always the worthier part of 
himself ; for that often, and more often in his last phase, 
was reserved for his books. But there is little doubt that 
the complete Oscar Wilde was the living and bewildering 
personality which rounded itself off and blotted itself out in 
a tragedy which was all the more nihilistic because of its 
abortive attempt at recuperation — an attempt which im- 
mortalised itself in the repentant sincerity of Dc Frojundis, 
but almost immediately fell forward into an anticlimax of 
tragedy more pitiful than the first. 

So far as we are able to judge, and with the aid of winnow- 
ing Time, it is already possible to single out the small 



82 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

contribution made by Oscar Wilde to poetry. The bulk of 
his poetry is negligible. It represents little more than the 
ardent outpourings of a young man still deeply indebted 
to his masters. One or two lyrics will certainly survive in 
the anthologies of the future, but if Wilde were dependent 
upon his verses for future acceptance his place Mould be 
among the minor poets. There is, however, a reservation 
to be made even here, as there is in almost every generalisa- 
tion about this elusive personality ; he wrote three poems, 
two towards the close of his earlier period, The Harlot's 
House and The Sphinx, and one near the close of his life, 
The Ballad of Reading Gaol, w'hich bear every indication of 
permanence. The two former will appeal to those avIio 
respond to strange and exotic emotions, the latter to those 
who are moved by the broader current of a^•crage human 
feeling. His last poem, and last work, docs not reveal merely 
Oscar Wilde's acceptance of a realistic attitude, it reveals 
what might have been, had he lived to pursue the matter 
further, con^ crsion to a natural and human acceptation of 
life. The sense of simplicity in art which previously he 
had been content to use as a refuge for the deliberately com- 
plex, as a sort of intensive culture for modern bewilderment, 
is now used with even greater effect in the cause of the most 
obvious of human emotions— pity : 

■' I never saw a man who looked 

With such a wistful eye 
Upon that little tent of blue 

Which prisoners call the sky. 
And at every drifting cloud that went 

With sails of silver by. 

I walked, with other souls in pain. 

Within another ring, 
And was wondering if the man had done 

A great or little thing, 
When a voice behind me whispered low, 

• That fellow's got to swing.' '-' 

There is none of the old earnest insincerity in this poem, 
and only occasionally does the poet fall back into the old 



OSCAR WILDE : THE LAST PHASE 83 

hizarrerie. Had The Ballad of Reading Gaol been written a 
hundred years ago, it would have been printed as a broad- 
side and sold in the streets by the balladmongers ; it is so 
common as that, and so great as that. But there is nothing 
common, and nothing great, in the universal sense, about 
the two earlier poems. These are distinguished only as the 
expressions of unusual vision and unusual mood ; they are 
decadent in so far as they express emotions that are sterile 
and perv^erse. They are decadent in the sense that Baude- 
laire was decadent, from whom they inherit almost every- 
thing save the English in which they are framed. But few 
will doubt their claim to a place in a curious artistic niche. 
The Sphinx, a masterly fantasy of bemused artificiality, is 
really a poetic design, an arabesque depending for effect 
upon hidden rhymes and upon strange fancies, expressing 
sensations which have hitherto been enshrined in art rather 
than in life : 

" Your eyes are like fantastic moons that shiver in some stagnant 
lake, 
Your tongue is like some scarlet snake that dances to fantastic tunes, 

Your pulse makes poisonous melodies, and your black throat is like 

the hole 
Left by some torch or burning coal on Saracenic tapestries."- 

Similarly, The HarloVs House interprets a mood that is so 
sinister and impish and unusual as to express disease rather 
than health : 

" Sometimes a horrible marionette 
Came out, and smoked its cigarette 
Upon the steps like a live thing. 

Then turning to my love, I said, 

' The dead are dancing with the dead. 

The dust is whirling with the dust.' 

But she — she heard the violin. 
And left my side, and entered in : 
Love passed into the house of lust." 



84 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

Wilde developed this abnormal attitude towards life in 
Tlie Picture of Dorian Gray and in Salome, and in each of 
these prose works he endeavours, often with success, to 
stimulate feelings that are usually suppressed, by means of 
what is strange and rare in art and luxury. It is not the 
plot that you think about whilst reading Salome, but the 
obvious desire of the author to tune the senses and the mind 
to a preposterous key : 

" I have jewels hidden in this place — jewels that your 
mother even has never seen ; jewels that are marvellous. I 
have a collar of pearls, set in four rows. They arc like unto 
moons chained with rays of silver. They are like fifty moons 
caught in a golden net. On the ivory of her breast a queen 
has worn it. Thou shalt be as fair as a queen when thou 
wearest it. I have amethysts of two kinds, one that is black 
like wine, and one that is red like wine which has been 
coloured with water. I have topazes yellow as are the eyes 
of tigers, and topazes that are pink as the eyes of a wood- 
pigeon, and green topazes that arc as the eyes of cats. I 
have opals that burn always, with an icelike flame, opals 
that make sad men's minds, and are fearful of the shadows. 
I have onyxes like the eyeballs of a dead woman. I have 
moonstones that change when the moon changes, and arc 
wan when they see the sun. I have sapphires big like eggs, 
and as blue as blue flowers. The sea wanders within them 
and the moon comes never to trouble the blue of their waves. 
I have chrysolites and beryls and chrysoprases and rubies. 
I have sardonyx and hyacinth stones, and stones of chalce- 
dony, and I will give them all to you, all, and other things 
will I add to them. The King of the Indies has but even 
now sent me four fans fashioned from the feathers of parrots, 
and the King of Numidia a garment of ostrich feathers. I 
have a crystal, into which it is not lawful for a woman to 
look, nor may young men behold it until they have been 
beaten with rods. In a coffer of nacre I have three wondrous 
turquoises. He who wears them on his forehead can imagine 
things which are not, and he who carries them in his hand 



OSCAR WILDE : THE LAST PHASE 85 

can make women sterile. These are great treasures above 
all price. They are treasures without price. But this is not 
all. In an ebony coffer I have two cups of amber, that are 
like apples of gold. If an enemy pour poison into these cups 
they become like an apple of silver. In a coffer encrusted 
with amber I have sandals encrusted with glass. I have 
mantles that have been brought from the land of the Seres, 
and bracelets decked about with carbuncles and with jade 
that came from the city of Euphrates. . . . What desirest 
thou more than this, Salome ? Tell me the thing that thou 
desirest, and I will give it thee. All that thou askest I will 
give thee, save one thing. I will give thee all that is mine, 
save one life. I will give the mantle of the High Priest. I 
will give thee the veil of the sanctuary." 

The mere naming of Jewels and treasures in a highly 
wrought prose-poem might in itself be as innocent as one 
of Walt Whitman's catalogues of implements, but even re- 
moved from its context there is something unusual and even 
sinister about Herod's offerings to Salome. The whole work 
is coloured by a hunger for sensation that has all the 
sterility of an excessive civilisation. 

In the essays collected in the book called Intentions, 
Oscar Wilde has let us into the secret which produced these 
works. That secret is an attempt to push Gautier's idea 
of art for art's sake, and Whistler's idea of art as Nature's 
exemplar, to their logical conclusions. He outdoes his 
masters with the obvious intention of going one better. 
Throughout the whole of his life he was filled with a boyish 
enthusiasm which took the form of self-delight. " His 
attitude was dramatic," says Arthur Symons, "and the 
whole man was not so much a personality as an attitude. 
Without being a sage, he maintained the attitude of a sage ; 
without being a poet, he maintained the attitude of a poet ; 
without being an artist he maintained the attitude of an 
artist." It is certainly true that his intellect was dramatic, 
and it is equally true that he was fond of adopting attitudes, 
but it is far from true to name three of his favourite attitudes 



86 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

and to say that these began and ended in the mere posture. 
For Oscar Wilde was both poet and sage and artist. He 
may not have been a great poet, he may not have been a 
great sage, he may not, which is more doubtful, have been a 
great artist, but the fact remains that the attitudes repre- 
senting those faculties and adopted by him were the symbols 
of demonstrable phases of his genius. Whilst always longing 
to express himself in literary forms, and knowing himself to 
be capable of doing so, he found it easier to express himself 
through the living personality. Writing bored him, and ; 
those who knew him are agreed that he did not put the best 
of himself into his work. "It is personalities," he said, 
" not principles, that move the age." 

Throughout the whole of his life he tried to live up, not 
to his blue-and- white china, but to an idea of personality ; 
and the whole of his philosophy is concerned with an attempt 
to prove that personality, even though it destroy itself, 
should be the final work of art. Indeed, in his opinion, art 
itself was nothing but the medium of personality. His atti- 
tudes thus become details in the art of personality. If they 
had no basis in fact, Oscar Wilde would have been no more 
than an actor playing a part in a work of art, but although 
he played, played at intellectual dandy, much as a boy will 
play at pirates, he was playing a part in the drama of life ; 
and he adopted the attitude of dandy in response to as real 
an emotion at least as that which inspires a boy to adopt the 
attitude of pirate. What he seemed to be doing all the time 
, was translating life into art through himself. His books 
were but incidents in this process. He always valued life 
more than art, and only appreciated the latter when its reflex 
action contributed something to his sensations ; but because 
he had thought himself into the position of one who trans- 
mutes life into art, he fell into the error of imagining art to 
be more important than life. And art for him was not only 
those formal and plastic things which we call the fine arts ; 
it embraced all luxurious artificialities. "All art is quite 
useless," he said. Such an attitude was in itself artificial ; 
but with Oscar Wilde this artificialism lacked any progressive 



OSCAR WILDE : THE LAST PHASE 87 

element ; it was sufficient in itself ; in short, it ended in 
itself, and not in any addition to personal power. Oscar 
Wilde never, for instance, dreamt of evolving into a god ; 
he dreamt of evolving into a master of sensation, a harp re- 
sponding luxuriously to every impression. This he became, 
or rather, this he always was, and it explained the many 
quite consistent charges of plagiarism that were always being 
brought against him, and it may explain his insensate plunge 
into forbidden sin, his conversion and his relapse. He lived 
for the mood, but whatever that mood brought him, whether 
it was the ideas of others or the perversities of what is impish 
in life, he made them his own. What he stole from Whistler, 
Pater, Balzac, Gautier and Baudelaire, whilst remaining 
recognisably derivative, had added unto them something 
which their originals did not possess. He mixed pure wines, 
as it were, and created a new complex beverage, not perhaps 
for quaffing, but a sort of liqueur, or, rather, a cocktail, with 
a piquant and original flavour not ashamed of acknowledging 
the flavours of its constituents. 

This, then, was in reality an attitude towards life, and not 
an empty pose. I do not think that Oscar Wilde had any 
hope of finding anything absolute ; he was born far too late 
in the nineteenth century for that. He had no purpose in 
life save play. He was the playboy of the Nineties ; and, 
like the hero of John Millington Synge's drama, he was 
subject to the intimidation of flatter}'-. Naturally inclined 
to go one better than his master, he was also inclined to 
please his admirers and astonish his enemies by going one 
better than himself, and as this one better generally meant 
in his later life one more extravagance, one further abandon- 
ment, it resulted, from the point of view of convention, in 
his going always one worse. Repetition of this whim turned 
perv^ersity into a habit, and the growing taunt of those who 
knew or suspected his serious perversions drove him into the 
final perversion of deliberately courting tragedy, much as 
the mouse is charmed back into the clutches of the cat after 
it has apparently been given a loophole of retreat. It would 
not have been cowardice if Oscar Wilde had escaped while 



88 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

he had the chance, and it was not bravery that made him 
bhnd to that chance ; he was bemused by his own attitude. 
Afterwaids, he learnt the meaning of pain, and he arrived at 
a conclusion similar to that of Nietzsche. But it was not 
until afterwards. And although he found consolation in 
Christian mysticism whilst in prison, and again on his death- 
bed, we shall never know mth what subtle joy he permitted 
his own destruction during the intervening period. Looketi 
at from such a point of view, his books help in explaining 
the man. The best of them, Intentions, The House of Pome- 
granates, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Soul of Man, 
The Ballad of Reading Gaol, De Profundis, and a handful 
of epigi'ams and short parables which he called Prose Poems, 
must, it seems to me, take a definite place in English litera- 
ture as the expression and explanation of the type Wilde 
represented. 

This type was not created by Oscar Wilde : it was very 
general throughout Europe at the close of the last century, 
and he represented only one version of it. Probably to him- 
self he imagined himself to approximate somewhat to the 
cynical idlers of his plays : Lord Goring in An Ideal Husband. 
Lord Darlington in Lady Windermere^s Fan, Lord Illingworth 
in A Woman of No Importance and Algernon Moncrieff in 
The Importance of Being Earnest may be partial portraits of 
the sort of personal impression their author imagined he was 
creating in the fashionable world. But he drew fuller por- 
traits of himself in his novel. I ord Henry Wotton and 
Dorian Gray represent two sides of Oscar Wilde ; they are 
both experimenters in life, both epicureans and both seeking 
salvation by testing life even to destruction. The Picture oj 
Dorian Gray is really a moral tale, and that also is character- 
istic of the genius of Oscar Wilde, for at no period of his life 
had he the courage of his amorality. He was always haunted 
by the still small voice which broke bounds and expressed 
itself freely in De Profundis. And whilst reading his books, 
or listening to his plays, one cannot help feeling that their 
very playfulness is but the cloak of tragedy. The decadent, 
weary with known joys and yearning for new sensations. 



OSCAR WILDE : THE LAST PHASE 89 

perpetually being rebuked by the clammy hand of exhausted 
desire, must needs laugh. Oscar Wilde laughed, and made 
us laugh, not by his wit so much as by his humour, that 
humour which dances over his plays and epigrams with the 
flutter of sheet lightning, compelling response where response 
is possible, but always inconsequent and always defying 
analysis. It reached its height in The Importance of Being 
Earnest, a comedy so novel, so irresistibly amusing and so 
perfect in its way that discussion of it ends in futility, like 
an attempt to explain the bouquet of old Cognac or the 
iridescence of opals. It is the moonshine of genius. The 
still small voice in him, of which his lambent humour is the 
mask, is stronger in The Soul of Man and The Ballad of Read- 
ing Gaol, and it is quite possible that had he lived the even 
life that he began to live on the bleak coast of Normandy 
after his release from prison, this underlying strain in his 
character would have turned him into a social reformer. 
His harrowing letters on prison conditions point to some 
such destiny especially when associated with his philosophic 
dash into the realm of Socialism. As it was, such humane 
zeal as he possessed ended on the one side in sublime pity 
and on the other in the dream of a Utopia for dandies. 

Dandy of intellect, dandy of manners, dandy of dress, 
Oscar Wilde strutted through the first half of the Nineties 
and staggered through the last. So pleased was he with 
himself, so interested was he in the pageant of life, that he 
devoted his genius, in so far as it could be public, to telling 
people all about it. His genius expressed itself best in 
stories and conversation, and he was always the centre of 
each. The best things in his plays are the conversations : 
the flippancies of dandies and the garrulities of delightful 
shameless dowagers. His best essays are colloquies ; those 
that are not depend for effect upon epigrams and aphorisms, 
originally dropped by himself in the dining-rooms and salons 
of London and Paris. When he was not conversing he was 
telling stories, and these stories, perhaps, the Prose Poems, 
The House of Pomegranates and The Hajjpy Prince, will out- 
live even his wittiest paradox. Salome is more a story, a 



90 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

" prosc-pocm, " than a play, and it is more, to use for once 
the method of inversion in which he dehghted, an epigram 
than a story. One can imagine the glee with which Oscar 
Wilde worked up to the anti-climax, to the moment after 
Salome has kissed the dead mouth of Jokanaan, and Herod 
has turned round and said : " Kill that woman." One can 
taste his own delight whilst writing the final stage instruc- 
tion : " The soldiers run forward and crush beneath their 
shields Salome, daughter of Herodias, Princess of Judaea." 
But more easily still can one imagine this remarkable man 
for ever telling himself an eternal tale in which he himself 
is hero. 



CHAPTER V 



AUBREY BEARDSLEY 



THE appearance of Aubrey Beardsley in 1893 was 
the most extraordinary event in English art since 
the appearance of Wilham Blake a little more than 
a hundred years earlier. With that, however, or almost 
so, the resemblance ends. Blake was born " out of his due 
time," not alone because he baffled the understanding of 
his age, but because his age scarcely knew of his existence. 
Beardsley, on the other hand, was born into an age of easy 
publicity ; and that circumstance, combined with the fact 
that he was so peculiarly of his period, instantly made him a 
centre of discussion, a subject for regard and reprehension. 
Temporally he was so appropriate that an earlier appearance 
would have been as premature as a later would have been 
tardy. It was inevitable that he should have come with 
The Yellow Book and gone with The Savoy. The times de- 
manded his presence. He was as necessary a corner-stone 
of the Temple of the Perverse as Oscar Wilde, but, unlike 
that great literary figure of the decadence in England, his 
singularity makes him a prisoner for ever in those Eighteen 
Nineties of which he was so inevitable an expression. He 
alone of all the interesting figures of those years is almost as 
sterile in art as he is local in point of time. Oscar Wilde 
added delicate raillery and novel lightness to drama, and a 
new accent to conversation ; Francis Thompson reintro- 
duced Christian mysticism into English poetry ; Ernest 
Dowson linked an eternal and bitter anguish of the soul with 
modern emotion ; and Arthur Symons, Max Beerbohm, 
John Davidson, G. S. Street and Richard Le Gallienne 
reasserted the significance of urbane things ; all revealed 
something that was universal — if only the universality of 

91 



92 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

taverns and courtesans. But Aubrey Beardsley is the unique 
expression of the most unique mood of the Nineties, a mood 
which was so hmited that his art would have been untrue 
had it been either imitable or vniiversal. As a matter of 
fact, it is neither ; all who have called Beardsley master 
have destroyed themselves, and his work was archaic even 
before he died. 

As a man, or rather as a boy — for although Beardsley 
reached manhood in years he hardly lost a certain boyish 
attitude towards life — he was admired for his gaiety of heart, 
unabashed joy in his work, and good-fellowship. He was 
born at Brighton on 21st August 1872, and died of tuber- 
culosis in 1898. From his seventh year his health was 
delicate, and pulmonary troubles began to be feared as early 
as 1881. He had passed through the first stages of education 
before this, first at a kindergarten at Brighton, and then at 
a preparatory school at Hurstpierpoint. But with the 
appearance of lung trouble he was removed to Epsom. The 
first artistic influence of his early life was music, and so pro- 
ficient did he become as an executant that, in 1883, he joined 
his family in London, and appeared on the concert platform 
with his sister (Miss Ma])cl Beardsley, who became an actress) 
as an infant prodigy. His real tastes, however, were liter- 
ary, and, although as a child almost he could talk with some- 
thing like authority upon music, he preferred to read books 
and dream in words and phrases. In 1884 he and his sister 
were living in Brighton again, and he began to attend the 
Brighton Granmiar School as a day boy. Although his 
tastes ran in the direction of books, he had innate skill with 
the pencil, and was influenced by the drawings of Kate 
Greenaway. \^'hen quite young he made a little money by 
decorating menu and invitation cards, but his drawing first 
attracted particular attention at the Grammar School, where 
the masters were interested and amused by his caricatures 
of themselves, and his earliest work thus came to appear in 
Past cmd Present, the magazine of that school. In 1888 he 
entered an architect's oflice in London, but apparently re- 
mained there for no great length of time, for in 1889 he was 




fei3!?fl!KS:J!igii;iai4lit!l^"f 



Aubrey IJeardsi.ey 

By Max Beerhohm 



AUBREY BEARDSLEY 93 

employed as a clerk in the Guardian Life & Vii'e Assurance 
Company. Whilst in that office he devoted his spare time 
to reading and drawing, and his passion for books led him, 
as it has led many another city clerk of literary tastes, to 
the well-known bookshop of Messrs Jones & Evans, in Queen 
Street, Cheap side, and here he made the acquaintance of 
Mr Frederick H. Evans, "whose enthusiasm for his drawings 
was the herald of Beardsley's fame. Thus with the dawn of 
the Nineties came whispers of the appearance of a new and 
remarkable artist. 

Through the intervention of Mr Evans, Aubrey Beardsley 
came into contact with the publishing world, and Mr J. M. 
Dent commissioned him to illustrate the now famous two- 
volume edition of the Morte d'Arthur, the publication of 
which in monthly parts, beginning June 1893, was Beardsley's 
debut as a book illustrator. About this time he met 
Joseph Pennell, who introduced him to the public in an 
enthusiastic article, illustrated by several characteristic 
drawings, in the first number of The Studio (April 1893), the 
cover of which was also designed by Beardsley. Interest in 
the new artist was immediate and clamorous ; and his work 
began to appear in many books. Messrs Dent & Company, 
Messrs Elkin Mathews & John Lane, Messrs liOngmans 
& Company and Mr David Nutt, all published books 
decorated by him. In 189-i he was appointed art editor of 
lite Yellow Book, and then the " Beardsley Craze " began 
in earnest. Beardsley posters appeared on the hoardings, 
and the man-in- the- street became further acquainted with 
the work of this marvellous boy tlirough the colunms of 
the popular newspapers and magazines. The "Beardsley 
Woman " was an absorbing topic ; and the young artist was 
belauded and belittled to exasperation. 

Never before did artist achieve such innnediate fame. He 
himself appreciated it all with unabashed delight, and worked 
harder and harder to meet the increasing demands upon his 
genius. Conscious, as John Keats had been, that " mortality 
weighed heavy upon him," he yet clung to life with the fatal 
hopefulness of the consumptive. He is said also to have 



94 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

worked feverishly, as though conscious of pending doom, 
but, although fully aware of his fatal disease, it was not until 
the last year of his life that he realised the nearness of death. 
As late as September 1897, when he had actually got as far 
as France on what proved to be his funeral journey to the 
south, he was buoyed up by the hope of a complete recovery. 
" Dr P. has just put me through a very careful examination," 
he wrote to the Rev. John Gray. " He thinks I have made 
quite a marvellous improvement since he saw me at the 
Windsor Hotel, and that if I continue to take care I shall get 
quite well and have a new life before me." 

A little more than seven months before, Aubrey Beardsley 
had been received into the Church of Rome, and his pub- 
lished letters, covering the period of preparation before his 
conversion, and closing a little less than three weeks before 
his death, are full of a sweetness which is heroic in so passion- 
ate a lover of life. In the introduction to The Last Letters of 
Aubrey Beardsley, those " noted letters " in which, as Arthur 
Symons has said, "we see a man die," Father Gray says: 
" Aubrey Beardsley might, had he lived, have risen, whether 
tlirough his art or otherwise, spiritually to a height from 
which he could command the horizon he was created to scan. 
As it was, the long anguish, the increasing bodily helpless- 
ness, the extreme necessity in which someone else raises one's 
hand, turns one's head, showed the slowly dying man things 
he had not seen before. He came face to face with the old 
riddle of life and death ; the accustomed supports and re- 
sources of his being were removed ; his soul, thus denuded, 
discovered needs unstable desires had hitherto obscured ; 
he submitted, like Watteau his master, to the Catholic 
Church." He was buried after a Mass at the cathedral 
at Mentone, in the hillside Catholic cemetery of that town ; 
his grave on the edge of the hill is hewn out of the rock ; 
" a true sepulchre, with an arched opening and a stone 
closing it." 

It is recorded that Aubrey Beardsley was greatly impressed 
by the wordless play, L^Enfant Prodigue, which delighted 
the playgoers of the Nineties, and one can well imagine how 



AUBREY BEARDSLEY 95 

the youthful artist found in the spacious silences of that 
novel production an echo of himself. Doubtless he saw in it 
something of his own vision of life translated into another 
form, but doubtless he felt also, but this time subconsciously, 
a response to that Pierrot note in his own soul which has 
been indicated by Arthur Symons. But Beardsley was some- 
thing more than that, something more purposeful, although 
his early death left his purpose unrealised. His youth made 
him the infant prodigy of the decadence ; and the Pierrot in 
him was an attitude, and even then it was a bigger attitude 
than that of its namesake. Innocence always frustrated the 
desires of Pierrot and left him desolate, but Aubrey Beardsley 
introduced into art the desolation of experience, the eiwiui 
of sin. It required the intensity of youth to express such an 
attitude, although the attitude savours not of the conven- 
tional idea of youth, but of the conventional idea of experi- 
enced age. Perhaps it is only the young who are ever really 
morbid, for youth more than age regrets that " spring should 
vanish with the rose." But youth that has heard the beat- 
ings of the wings of death, as Beardsley must have done, 
grows so hungry for the joys and beauties of spring that it 
becomes aged by the very intensity of desire. Keats, like 
Aubrey Beardsley, suffered such hunger, because, like 
Beardsley, whom he resembles so much temperamentally, 
he loved as he said " the mighty abstract idea of Beauty in 
all things." And with both poet and artist there was acute 
consciousness of the evanescence of Beauty : 

" Beauty that must die ; 
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips 

Bidding adieu, and aching Pleasure nigh. 
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips.'' 

But that reality is not only the attitude of hypersensitive 
youth towards life ; it is the attitude of self-conscious civilisa- 
tion. And how like modern civilisation is Max Beerbohm's 
summary of Aubrey Beardsley 's temperament ? " He knew 
that life was short, and so he loved every hour of it with a 
kind of jealous intensity. He had that absolute power of 



96 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

' living in the moment ' which is given only to the doomed 
man — that kind of sell-conscious happiness, the delight in 
still clinging to the thing whose worth you have only realised 
through the knowledge that it will soon be taken from you. 
For him, as for the schoolboy whose holidays are near their 
close, every hour — every minute, even — had its value. His 
drawing, his compositions in prose and in verse, his reading 
— these things were not enough to satisfy his strenuous de- 
mands on life. He was himself an accomplished musician, 
he was a great frequenter of concerts, and seldom, when he 
was in London, did he miss a ' Wagner night ' at Covent 
Garden. He loved dining out, and, in fact, gaiety of 
any kind. His restlessness was, I suppose, one of the 
symptoms of his malady. He was always most content 
where there was the greatest noise and bustle, the largest 
number of people, and the most brilliant light." That is 
a picture of the age as well as of its epitome, Aubrey 
Beardsley. 

In spite, however, of this hunger for life, this restless desire 
for more and more vitality, he contrived to retain a natural 
sweetness in his dealings with his fellow-men which has left 
many happy memories, some of which have been recorded. 
When Robert Ross first met Beardsley in 1892 he was so 
overcome by his " strange and fascinating originality " that 
he neglected the portfolio of drawings which the young artist 
had with him. ' ' He was an intellectual Marcellus suddenly 
matured," says this chronicler. "His rather long brown 
hair, instead of being cbourijfe, as the ordinary genius is 
expected to wear it, was brushed smoothly and flatly on his 
head and over part of his immensely high and narrow brow. 
His* face even then was terribly drawn and emaciated. 
Except in his manner, I do not think his general appearance 
altered very much in spite of his ill-health and suffering, 
borne with such unparalleled resignation and fortitude ; he 
always had a most delightful smile, both for friends and 
strangers." 

Arthur Symons suggests that any eccentricities or diffi- 
culties of character possessed by Beardsley were easily for- 



AUBREY BEARDSLEY 97 

gotten in his personal charm: "He seemed to have read 
everything, and had his preferences as adroitly in order, as 
wittily in evidence, as almost any man of letters ; indeed, he 
seemed to know more, and was a sounder critic, of books 
than of pictures ; with perhaps a deeper feeling for music 
than for either. His conversation had a peculiar kind of 
brilliance, different in order but scarcely inferior in quality 
to that of any other contemporary master of that art ; a 
salt, whimsical dogmatism, equally full of convinced egoism 
and of imperturbable keen-sightedness. Generally choosing 
to be paradoxical and vehement on behalf of any enthusiasm 
of the mind, he was the dupe of none of his own statements, 
or indeed of his own enthusiasms, and, really, very coldly 
impartial. I scarcely accept even his own judgment of him- 
self, in spite of his petulant, amusing self-assertion, so full 
of the childishness of genius. He thought, and was right 
in thinking, very highly of himself; he admired himself 
enormously ; but his intellect would never allow itself to be 
deceived even about his own accomplishments." "I re- 
member that when I first saw him," says Max Beerbohm, 
" I thought I had never seen so utterly frail a creature — he 
looked more like a ghost than a living man. He was then, I 
believe, already in an advanced stage of pulmonary con- 
sumption. When I came to know him better, I realised 
that it was only by sheer force of nerves that he contrived to 
sustain himself. He was always, whenever one saw him, in 
the highest spirits, full of fun and of fresh theories about life 
and art. But one could not help feeling that as soon as he 
were alone he would sink down, fatigued and listless, with 
all the spirit gone out of him. One felt that his gaiety 
resulted from a kind of pride, and was only assumed, as one 
should say in company." Another friend of the artist, 
H. C. Marillier, writes : " Poor Beardsley ! His death has 
removed a quaint and amiable personality from among us ; 
a butterfly who played at being serious, and yet a busy 
worker who played at being a butterfly. Outwardly, he 
lived in the sunshine, airing bright wings. Inwardly no 
one can tell how be suffered or strove. It is well to avoid 



98 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

self-righteousness in judging him. As the wise pastrycook 
says in Cyrano^ 

" ' four mi n'insuUe pas ccs divines cigales.' '• 

But there is Uttle doubt that Aubrey Beard sley did take 
his work very seriously, boyish as he was, dandy as he was, 
butterfly as he was. He loved praise and approbation as 
all men do ; but when he won the frank appreciation of 
an acknowledged master, such as Whistler, as eventually he 
did, Bcardsley showed his own sincerity and earnestness by 
tears. The story is told very simply and very beautifully 
by Elizabeth and Joseph Pennell in The Life of James 
McNeill Whistler : 

" Whistler met Beardsley and got to like not only him, as 
everybody did, but his work. One night when Whistler was 
with us, Beardsley turned up, as always when he went to 
see anyone, with his portfolio of his latest work under his 
arm. This time it held the illustrations for The Rape of the 
Lock, which he had just made. Whistler, who always saw 
everything that was being done, had seen The Yellow Book, 
started in 1894, and he disliked it as much as he then disliked 
Beardsley, who was the art editor ; but he had also seen the 
illustrations to Salome, disliking them too, probably because 
of Oscar Wilde ; he knew many of the other drawings, one 
of which, whether intentionally or unintentionally, was more 
or less a reminiscence of Mrs Whistler, and he no doubt knew 
that Beardsley had made a caricature of him which a follower 
carefully left in a cab. When Beardsley opened the port- 
folio, and began to show us The Rape of the Lock, Whistler 
looked at them first indifferently, then with interest, then 
with delight. And then he said slowly ; ' Aubrey, I have 
made a very great mistake — you are a very great artist.' 
And the boy burst out crying. All Whistler could say, when 
he could say anything, was ' I mean it — I mean it — I mean 
it.'" 

Leaving aside the prodigious elements in the life and work 
of Aubrey Beardsley, his youth and early death, the sudden 




The Rape of the Lock 

By Auhriy Beardsley 



AUBREY BEARDSLEY 99 

ripening of uninstructed genius, and the brilliant productive- 
ness of those last six disease-ridden years, his best drawings 
stand out from the general level of British art with such 
sheer audacity as to compel attention. It may be true that 
more than half of this distinction is comprised of the inso- 
lence of originality or of mere difference, but even then his 
novelties and differences are so remarkable as to be things 
in themselves. Most artists are generally normal in their 
work, departing only into the margin of the page of art by 
means of a mannerism or so upon which neither they nor 
their admirers insist overmuch. Aubrey Beardsley was all 
mannerism ; his genius all whim. That is the explanation 
of its suddenness ; its surprise. But it does not explain the 
extraordinary vision of humanity associated with his work. 
An interviewer once asked him whether he used models. 
" All humanity inspires me. Every passer-by is my uncon- 
scious sitter," Beardsley replied, " and," he added, " strange 
as it may seem, I really draw folk as I see them. Surely it is 
not my fault that they fall into certain lines and angles." 
Contradictions of actuality as each of these statements may 
be, they yet throw light on Beardsley 's attitude. Those who 
know his work, eclectic as it is, know that " all humanity " 
did not inspire it ; that " every passer-by " was not an 
" unconscious sitter " ; that his confession of drawing folk 
as he saw them was merely the art cant of the hour, which 
he tacitly admits by the suggestion that such a confession is 
strange, in the light of his own drawings and what he and the 
interviewer knew to be actually true. It was not, of course, 
his fault that these folk under his pencil fell into " certain 
lines and angles," it was the natural outcome of his genius. 
But that genius was never pictorial in the realistic sense. 
Beardsley was not an Impressionist, like Manet or Renoir, 
drawing the thing as he saw it ; he was not a visionary, like 
William Blake, drawing the thing as he dreamt it ; he was an 
intellectual, like George Frederick Watts, drawing the thing 
as he thought it. Aubrey Beardsley is the most literary of 
all modern artists ; his drawings are rarely the outcome of 
pure observation — they are largely the outcome of thought ; 



100 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

they are thoughts become pictures. And even then they are 
rarely if ever the blossoming of thought derived from ex- 
perience ; they are the hot-house gro^vths of thought derived 
from books, pictures and music. Beardsley always worked 
indoors, without models and by artificial, generally candle, 
light. On those rare occasions when he did go to life for 
inspiration he went to life in its more artificial form — to 
theatres and salons, to the Domino Room at the Cafe Royal, 
to the Pavilion at Brighton and the Casino at Dieppe. 

The rococo in art and life appealed to him and influenced 
him in his finest creative moments. Other influences are 
certainly obvious in much of his work ; something of the 
Japanese, but not so much as some critics have imagined, 
much of VVatteau, and a great deal of Burne- Jones, who early 
expressed approval of the new artist — perchance, as Tenny- 
son said of Prince Albert and King Arthur in The Idylls of 
the King, " Perchance in finding there, unconsciously, some 
image of himself," although the "Beardsley woman," that 
sardonic creature, who looks as if she were aways hungering 
for the sensation after next, might well have been, as she 
probably was, at her inception, a caricature of the wraith- like 
women of Burne- Jones. The wan and saintly amorousness 
of the figures in the Romaunt of the Rose become cadaver- 
ous with sin, and fat with luxury in the figures of Aubrey 
Beardsley. But wherever the influence of Japanese or 
English gestheticism asserts itself in Beardsley 's drawings, it 
does so to their detriment, as in the case of the illustrations 
and decorations of the Morte d' Arthur and the " Procession 
of Joan of Are," although the influence behind the decora- 
tions in the former work is obviously more that of William 
Morris than of Burne-Jones. The only pictorial influence 
which had a creative effect upon the work of Beardsley was 
that of Watteau, under whose spell, born of deep sympathy 
with the old master's sophisticated period, Beardsley pro- 
duced some of his most satisfying pictures. 

Save for two months in an art school, Beardsley had no 
art training. He was self-taught, and the so-called influ- 
ences require another name to describe them precisely. 




Page Decoration from the Morte d' Arthur 

By Aubrey Beardsley 



AUBREY BEARDSLEY 101 

They were studies in technique ; he used tlicm much as the 
average art student uses his models — to teach himself the 
use of his materials, and they were dropped with the de- 
velopment of mastery. Throughout his short and astonishing 
art life, Beardsley was thus shedding those artistic in- 
fluences which appeared to dominate him. But all the time 
he added himself to his masters : he was never dominated. 
The rapt and languorous spirituality of Bm-ne- Jones was 
translated into grotesque and leering fleshliness — if languor- 
ous at all, languorous with sin. The frozen realities of Japan 
became torrid reflections of occidental passion expressed in 
crisp shadows and sweeps of line in black and white, suggest- 
ing colours undreamt of even in the rainbow East. But 
apart from all this, and during the earlier transition period, 
Aubrey Beardsley had actually discovered himself. At a 
time when he had barely ceased turning out poor echoes of 
Burne-Jones for his friends, he was drawing such daringly 
original things as "The Wagnerians," "The Fat Woman," 
"The Kiss of Judas," and "Of a Neophyte, and how the 
Black Art was revealed unto him by the Fiend Asomuel." 
From such work he passed on to the decorations for Salome^ 
which consummate magnificently his first period, and to 
those of The Rape of the Lock, which gave formal art a new 
meaning and Beardsley immortality. 

The only real and lasting influence in the art of Aubrey 
Beardsley was literature. All who have written about him 
concur as to his amazing booklore. He himself admitted 
to having been influenced by the writers of the eighteenth 
century. " Works like Congreve's plays appeal far more 
vividly to my imagination than do those belonging to the age 
of Pericles," he said, in the interview already quoted. He 
was well versed in the literature of the decadence, and was 
fond of adventuring in strange and forbidden bookish realms 
of any and every age. The romance, Under the Hill, especi- 
ally in its unexpurgated form, suggests deep knowledge of 
that literature generally classed under facetice and erotica 
by the booksellers, and there are passages which read like 
romanticised excerpts from the Psychopathia Sexualis of 



102 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

Kralft-Ebing. The Last Letters of Aubrey Beardsley reveal 
on almost every page an extraordinary interest in books, 
equalled only by the keenness of his insight into literature. 
They reveal also how he was gradually being drawn from the 
literature of time to that of eternity. " Heine," he writes, 
" certainly cuts a poor figure beside Pascal. If Heine is 
the great warning, Pascal is the great example to all artists 
and thinkers. He understood that to become a Christian the 
man of letters must sacrifice his gifts, just as Magdalen must 
sacrifice her beauty." And in the last letter in the volume, 
less than three weeks before his death, he wrote : "I have 
been reading a good deal of S. Alphonsus Liguori ; no one 
dispels depression more than he. Reading his loving ex- 
clamations, so lovingly reiterated, it is impossible to remain 
dull and sullen." 

In his literary predilections, more even than in his art, 
you can see the mind of Aubrey Beardsley. All the rest- 
lessness, all the changefulness of modernity were there. His 
art was constantly changing, as Oscar Wilde's was, not 
necessarily progressing, for, properly understood, Beardsley 
said his say in " The Fat Woman," just as the essence of 
Wilde is in The Harlofs House. All afterwards was repeti- 
tion, restatement, intensification and elaboration. As with 
all the work of the decadence, Aubrey Beardsley's repre- 
sented a consistent search after new and more satisfying 
experiences : the soul-ship seeking harbourage. But unlike 
so many decadents he possessed humour. You hear the 
laugh, often enough satyric, behind his most sinister design ; 
and there is something in Max Beerbohm's belief that many 
of his earlier drawings, which seemed morbid and horrible, 
were the outcome of a very natural boyish desire to shock 
conventional folk. But that does not explain away his 
undeniable interest in all phases of sexual experience. 
In normal youth, this tendency generally satisfies itself by 
absorbing the current and colloquial variants of, say, the 
stories of the Decameron. But Beardsley loved the abnormal 
and he invented a sort of phallic symbolism to express his 
interest in passionate pen^ersities. His prose work, Under 



AUBREY BEARDSLEY 103 

the Hill, is an uncompleted study in the art of aberration. 
He is seldom frankly ribald, after the manner of youth, 
although, strangely enough, the most masterly of all his 
drawings, the illustrations to the Lysistrata, if it were not for 
their impish cynicism, are sufficiently Rabelaisian to satiate 
the crudest appetite for indecencies. It has been urged 
that Beardsley was engaged with such matters as a satirist, 
that his designs had the ultimate moral objective of all satire. 
Such apologies would make of him an English Felicien Rops. 
But there is little genuine evidence to support the contention, 
and what there is fades away in the light of an unpublished 
letter, written after his conversation during his very last 
days, imploring his friends in a few tragic, repentant words 
to destroy all indecent drawings. "I implore you," he 
wrote, " to destroy all copies of Lysistrata and bawdy 

drawings. Show this to and conjure him to do same. 

By all that is holy all obscene drawings," And the words, 
"In my death agony," were added after the signature. 

Aubrey Beardsley, although he died a saint, represents 
a diabolonian incident in British art. He was essentially a 
decorator ; but with the perversity of one phase of his genera- 
tion he made decoration a thing in itself. None of the books 
he illustrated are illustrated or decorated in the best sense. 
His designs overpower the text — not because they are 
greater but because they are inappropriate, sometimes even 
impertinent. The diabolical thumb-nail notes in the " Bon 
Mot " series have nothing whatever to do with the texts. 
Where the designs for the Morte d' Arthur approximate to 
the work of William Morris and Burne- Jones they serve 
their purpose, but where they reveal the true Beardsley they 
miss the point ; the Salome drawings seem to sneer at Oscar 
Wilde rather than interpret the play. The Rape of the Lock 
is eclipsed, not explained, by Beardsley. But, outrageous 
as his decorative comments on the Lysistrata may be, they 
are at least logical commentations on the text of the play ; 
as are also the illustrations to his own Under the Hill. "No 
book ever gets well illustrated once it becomes a classic," 
wrote Beardsley, but that does not explain his own failure 



104 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

as an illustrator. He failed as an illustrator because his art 
was decoration in the abstract : it lacked the rhythm of 
relationship — just as he himself lacked obvious relationship 
with the decades that preceded and followed him. He is 
entombed in his period as his own design is absorbed in its 
own firm lines. 

But Beardsley as a fact is the significant thing, not 
Beardsley as an artist. It does not matter how or where he 
stands in art, for he represents not art so much as an idea, 
not an accomplishment so much as a mood. The restless, 
inquisitive, impudent mood of the Nineties called him forth, 
and he obeyed and served and repented. 




Taii-I'ikce I'Ro.M Sai.o.me 

By Auhrcy BcardsUy 



CHAPTER VI 

THE NEW DANDYISM 

"The future belongs to the dandy. It is the exquisites who are going to 
rule." — Oscar Wilde. 

LOVE of town is a human passion which may not be 
suppressed by advocates of the Simple Life and the 
Return to Nature, even though they bedeck their 
propaganda with words of flame. Such enthusiasts can 
never be more than apostles of a marginal gospel, attracting 
the few and, perhaps, the ill-starred. To the average man 
they will be nothing but curious folk, a little unbalanced — 
what are called cranks. For human life gravitates town- 
wards ; even when it emigrates, and settles in lands of 
prairie and forest, cities spring up about it ; nothing, indeed, 
is more certain than the fact that, at the touch of humanity, 
the wilderness blossoms with the town. Normal man has, 
however, always loved to toy with the idea of the country, 
with its whispers of romance and health. But during the 
Eighteen Nineties, as in one or two other periods in history, 
art threw a glamour over the town, and all the artificial 
things conjured up by that word. Poets, it is true, did not 
abandon the pastoral mood, but they added to it an enthusi- 
asm for what was urban. Where, in the past, they found 
romance only in wild and remote places, among what are 
called natural things, they now found romance in streets and 
tlieatres, in taverns and restaurants, in bricks and mortar 
and the creations of artificers. Poets no longer sought in- 
spiration in solitude, they invoked the Muses in Fleet Street 
and the Strand. And whilst not entirely abandoning, as I 
say, the old themes which they have always and will always 
sing, they discovered a fresh delight in more sophisticated 
matters. These poets sang not only to " Corinna's going 

105 



106 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

a-maying," but they found a subtle joy in acelaiming " Nora 
of the Pavement." It were unkhid to say that they ceased 
hearing the morning stars singing together, but they certainly 
heard also, and with equal delight, the " Stars " of the music 
halls. Richard Le Gallienne, for instance, ceased for a while 
his consideration of the lilies of the field to consider " the 
Iron Lilies of the Strand " ; John Davidson, with his 
Eclogues, became the Virgil of Fleet Street ; and Arthur 
Symons became the Herrick of the Theatre of Varieties. 

In all this awakening interest in urban things, it is not 
surprising to learn that London inspired a renaissance of 
wonder, one phase of which found sympathetic expression in 
Richard Le Gallienne's 

" London, London, our delight, 
Great flower that opens but at night, 
Great city of the midnight sun. 
Whose day begins when day is done. 

Lamp after lamp against the sky 
Opens a sudden beaming eye. 
Leaping a light on either hand. 
The iron lilies of the Strand." 

Not that the wonder of London was in any sense a new 
thing, even in literature. The capital city had inspired 
many a song, and many a purple patch of prose. But the 
men of the Nineties certainly added a new meaning to their 
worship of the great town. They reasserted the romance of 
London as an incident in their new-found love of the artificial. 
This adoration extended from streets as abstract and ador- 
able things separately to the houses of the streets, and even, 
with a characteristically delicious thrill of wickedness, to the 
women of the streets, and, with the remorseless logic of 
the period, to the patchouli, the rouge and the peroxide 
of hydrogen which are among the media of the craft of that 
ancient sisterhood. In short, it was a characteristic of the 
decadence not to sing the bloom of Nature but the bloom of 
cosmetics, and, likewise, town was adored for its artificial 
rather than its natural characteristics. 



THE NEW DANDYISM 107 

This new sophistication of the artistic temperament was 
again no sudden thing ; it was linked by many correspond- 
ences with the urbane spirit of all times, although it favoured 
such remote forbears as Catullus and Petronius rather than 
the nearer and more domesticated ancestors, Charles Lamb, 
Samuel Johnson and Charles Dickens. It was Whistler 
who taught the modern world how to appreciate the beauty 
and wizardry of cities. He taught them by pictures and he 
taught them by magical and unforgettable words: "And 
when the evening mist clothes the riverside with poetry, as 
with a veil, the poor buildings lose themselves in the dim 
sky, and the tall chimneys become campanili, and the ware- 
houses are palaces in the night, and the whole city hangs 
in the heavens, and fairy-land is before us. . . ." But 
Whistler's revelation was not for the sake of the town, it was 
for the sake of art. It was Oscar Wilde, taking his cue from 
Whistler, who turned the idea of the beauty of art against 
natural beauty, into the artificial against the natural. He 
learnt from Whistler that trick of thought which placed 
Nature under an obligation to Art. Whistler's whimsical 
sayings about " foolish " sunsets and " Nature catching up 
to Art " set Oscar Wilde's nimble wit dancing down the 
corridors of paradox. " What art really reveals to us is 
Nature's lack of design," he says ; " her curious crudities, 
her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished 
condition. Nature has good intentions, of course, but, as 
Aristotle once said, she cannot carry them out. When I 
look at a landscape I cannot help seeing all its defects. It 
is fortunate for us, however, that Nature is so imperfect, 
as otherwise we should have had no art at all. Art is our 
spirited protest, our gallant attempt to teach Nature her 
proper place. . . . All bad art comes from returning to Life 
and Nature, and elevating them into ideals. Life and Nature 
may sometimes be used as part of Art's rough material, but 
before they are of any real service to Art they must be trans- 
lated into artistic conventions. . . . Life imitates Art far 
more than Art imitates Life. This results not merely from 
Life's imitative instinct but from the fact that the self- 



108 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

conscious aim of Life is to find expression, and that Art offers 
it certain beautiful forms through which it may reahse that 
energy." But Wilde was not alone in upholding such ideas : 
they were in the air of the time, and found many exponents 
in what became a conscious if tentative revolt against 
Nature. " For behold ! " cried Max Beerbohm in, if not 
the ablest, one of the most convincing of his satires, " the 
Victorian era comes to its end and the day of sancta sim- 
plicitas is quite ended. The old signs are here and the 
portents warn the seer of life that we are ripe for a new epoch 
of artifice. Are not men rattling the dice-box and ladies 
dipping their fingers in the rouge-pot ? " And history was 
induced to pay tribute to the mood by Richard Le Gallienne, 
who reminded his age that the bravest of men had worn 
corsets. 

Romance — or, at least, romance in its old obvious sense 
of wonder attuned to awe — was not, then, the final essence 
of this new interest in town life ; although the older romance 
had also its exponents during the fin de siecle renaissance. 
The London Voluntaries of William Ernest Henley set an 
older and more virile romanticism to a new music, and in no 
poem was his vigorous music more vigorous or more inspired 
than in the lines beginning "Down through the ancient 
Strand," which close with a paean of ardent appreciation, 
if without quite achieving real ecstasy: 

" For earth and sky and air. 
Are golden everywhere. 
And golden with a gold so suave and fine 
The looking on it lifts the heart like wine. 
Trafalgar Square 

(The fountains volleying golden glaze) 
Gleams like an angel market. High aloft 
Over his couchant Lions in a haze 
Shimmering and bland and soft, 
A dust of chrysoprase. 
Our Sailor takes the golden gaze 
Of the saluting sun, and flames superb 
As once he flamed it on his ocean round. 
The dingy dreariness of the picture-place. 
Turned very nearly bright. 



THE NEW DANDYISM 109 

Takes on a luminous transciency of grace. 

And shows no more a scandal to the ground. 

The very blind man pottering on the kerb. 

Among the posies and the ostrich feathers 

And the rude voices touched with all the weathers 

Of the long, varying year, 

Shares in the universal alms of light. 

The windows, with their fleeting, flickering fires. 

The height and spread of frontage shining sheer. 

The quiring signs, the rejoicing roofs and spires — 

'Tis El Dorado — El Dorado plain. 

The Golden City ! And when a girl goes by. 

Look ! as she turns her glancing head, 

A call of gold is floated from her ear ! 

Golden, all golden ! In a golden glory, 

Long lapsing down a golden coasted sky. 

The day not dies but seems 

Dispersed in wafts and drifts of gold, and shed 

Upon a past of golden song and story 

And memories of gold and golden dreams." 

But Henley was not blind to the seamy side of London 
life, to the grey and bitter tragedy of a great city, as he 
proved on more than one occasion, and, especially, in the 
poem beginning "Out of the poisonous East." Among the 
notable poets who sang of the romance of London after 
Henley came Laurence Binyon, with his London Visions, 
which were mspired by a quieter and more reflective muse, 
but voicing none the less the peculiar qualities of the London 
enthusiasm of the time : 

" Hazily blue the air, heavy with dews 
The wind ; and before me the cries and the crowd. 
And the sleepless murmur of wheels ; not loud. 
For a magical softness all imbrues. 
The softness estranges my sense : I see and I hear. 
But know 'tis a vision intangible, shapes that seem. 
All is unreal ; the sound of the falling of feet, 
Coming figures, and far-off hum of the street ; 
A dream, the gliding hurry, the endless lights. 
Houses and sky, a dream, a dream ! " 

The newer and more peculiar sense of London was less 
general in its expression. It sprang more out of the 



110 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

intimacies of life, and appealed less to well-explored emotions 
of wonder and mystery than to more unique poetic moods 
of fewer but by no means rare individuals. It was more 
precisely a striving after reality through the medium of tem- 
perament. This intimate romanticism of the new urbanity 
tended always towards the artificial. Perhaps it was al- 
most too real to be romantic, as it was too romantic to be 
real. It was less the artistic expression of a phase of life 
than the expression of a phase of art. It was really the art 
of posing, using the term intellectually to indicate what was 
certainly a state of mind rather than a conceit, for there is 
no reason why a pose need be other than sincere. The arti- 
ficiality of the period which thus expressed itself by means of 
the personal pose was essentially a form of dandyism, not 
the dandyism which might or could express itself merely 
in clothing, but that dandyism of the temperament which 
found a true philosopher in Barbey D'Aurevilly and, perhaps, 
a truer in Charles Baudelaire. The dandyism of Baudelaire 
only expressed itself incidentally in the clothing of the body. 
It strove tragically enough to achieve soul- sufficiency, not 
by tasting, as the old mystics did, all the stars and all the 
heavens in a crust of bread, but by experiencing purgatory 
in every sensation. He and his followers were dandies of 
the spirit ; but acute consciousness of sin bade them resist 
not evil, in contradistinction to the older mystics who be- 
came dandies of the spirit because they resisted evil. The 
desire of Baudelaire, as of all those who are in any way 
akin to him, was to discover in life that ecstasy which is 
eternity. 

Dandyism may, and generally does, express itself in 
clothes ; it did in the Eighteen Nineties express itself in the 
apparel of many a self-conscious "masher." But, whether 
it expresses itself in the clothing of the body or in the clothing 
of the mind, it is generally the outcome of similar causes. 
The chief of these, as Barbey D'Aurevilly saw, is boredom. 
Dandyism is thus a protest against the lassitude of soul 
which follows lapse of interest in the life of the hour. " Like 
those philosophers," says D'Aurevilly, "who raised up an 



THE NEW DANDYISM 111 

obligation superior to the law, so the dandies of their own 
authority make rules that shall dominate the most aristo- 
cratic, the most conservative sets, and with the help of wit, 
which is an acid, and of grace, which is a dissolvent, they 
manage to ensure the acceptance of their changeable rules, 
though these are in fact nothing but the outcome of their 
own audacious personalities. Such a result is curious, and 
flows from the nature of things. In vain does society 
refuse to bend, in vain do aristocracies admit only received 
opinions ; one day Caprice arises and makes its way through 
those seemingly impenetrable grades, which were really 
undermined by boredom." The revolt against Nature in 
England was in reality a revolt against the ennui of con- 
ventions which in operation acted as checks upon the free 
movements of personalities and ideas. D'Aurevilly has 
observed that dandyism in recent times was an English 
product, but also that it was introduced into this country 
originally by the gallants of the Restoration who had lived 
in France during the time England was under the heel of 
the Puritan : it was, in fact, the Pagan's reply to Puritanism. 
Dandyism has always been in the nature of such a reply. 
But it is interesting to note that the new romanticism which 
found expression in the decadence was also derived from 
France, as was also its immediate ancestor, that romantic 
movement to which D'Aurevilly belonged. 

Dandyism of the intellect was as much a characteristic of 
Theophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire and Barbey D'Aure- 
villy as it was of Whistler, Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beards- 
ley, and it is worth noting that these three English-speaking 
artists were dandies also in the sartorial sense. But the 
resemblance to the innate dandyism of D'Aurevilly is even 
more marked when we remember his theory that dandyism 
always produced the unexpected — " that which could not 
logically be anticipated by those accustomed to the yoke of 
rules. " Unexpectedness was the secret of half the originality 
of the Eighteen Nineties ; it was the salt of its philosophy, 
and the charm of its most characteristic art. "To expect 
the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect," said 



112 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

Oscar Wilde in his Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of 
the Young, a little work which is a veritable philosophy of 
dandyism. Literature in the Nineties ran to epigram, that 
poseur of syntax, and to paradox, that dandified juggler of 
ideas. Habits played blind man's buff with convention ; 
and so determined was the fashion of the hour to be " out 
of fashion " that, with those who were dans le mouvemeni 
heterodoxy took the sting out of its own tail by becoming a 
form of orthodoxy. So remarkable was this spread of in- 
tellectual vanity that it was quite possible to have at one and 
the same time such variations as Oscar Wilde and Aubrey 
Beardsley surprising by their neo-paganism and its glorifica- 
tion of the artificial ; Max Beerbohm and G. S. Street sur- 
prising by their satires of the former and, above all, by their 
very conservatism in an age of revolt ; and, at the other 
extreme, such a complete and versatile revolutionary surprise 
packet of vanity as Bernard Shaw, who added to the general 
astonishment by insisting upon the Puritanical basis of his 
own theory of life. Equally surprising and unexpected 
to all but the most patient observers of intellectual re- 
volutions, was the completion of the somersault of ideas at 
the very dawn of the twentieth century, when intellectual 
consciousness landed on its feet, as it were, becoming 
wildly English and frankly Christian in the genius of 
G. K. Chesterton. 

Whilst the essential dandyism of the decade lasted it 
needed an urban background. Town was its natural element, 
pastoral dandyism being as yet unborn, though pastoral 
romance was as old as the hills. The very idyll of love 
literally assumed a new complexion. It was not fashionable 
for poets to sing of shepherd who told 

" his tale 
Under the hawthorn in the dale.'- 

It was the fashion to sing, as Arthur Symons did, of 

" The chance romances of the streets, 
The Juhet of a night " ; 



THE NEW DANDYISM 113 

and poets, far from protesting overmuch of eternal fidelity, 
unblushingly confessed their lack of amorous concentration ; 

" I too have sought on many a breast , 
The ecstasy of love's unrest, 
I too have had my dreams and met 
(Ah me !) how many a Juhet.'' 

Such poems are in many instances artificial to the extent 
that they are obviously the result of deliberately cultivated 
moods ; they and their kind are the green carnations of song ; 
and they are unnatural only to the extent that they represent 
a peculiarly civilised, as distinct from a peculiarly barbarian, 
form of life. These differences reveal themselves more 
clearly in Arthur Symons' defence of his own early poems, 
which a reviewer had called "unwholesome" because, he 
said, they had "a faint smell of patchouli about them." 
The name of that scent was used more or less symbolically, 
and the poet accepts it as such and sums up an eloquent 
defence of his position as follows : — 

"Patchouli! Well, why not Patchouli? Is there any 
' reason in nature ' why we should write exclusively about 
the natural blush, if the delicately acquired blush of rouge 
has any attraction for us ? Both exist ; both, I think, are 
charming in their way ; and the latter as a subject has, at 
all events, more novelty. If you prefer your ' new mown 
hay ' in the hayfield, and I, it may be, in a scent bottle, why 
may not my individual caprice be allowed to find expression 
as well as yours ? Probably I enjoy the hayfield as much 
as you do, but I enjoy quite other scents and sensations just 
as well and I take the former for granted and write my poem, 
for a change, about the latter. There is no necessary differ- 
ence in artistic value between a good poem about a flower in 
the hedge, and a good poem about the scent in a sachet. I 
am always charmed to read beautiful poems about nature in 
the country. Only, personally, I prefer town to country ; 
and in the town we have to find for ourselves, as best we may, 
the decor which is the town equivalent of the great natural 
decor of fields and hills. Here it is that artificiality comes in ; 



114 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

and if anyone sees no beauty in the effects of artificial light 
in all the variable, most human, and yet most factitious town 
landscape, I can only pity him, and go on my own way." 

The above passage does something more than defend with 
sound logic the artificial attitude of the decadence ; it throws 
a very useful light upon the whole of that phase of the art 
and life of the period. Arthur Symons in his own personality 
substantiates Barbey D'Aurevilly's theory that the dandy 
is the product of boredom ; Symons having been niu'tured 
in Nonconformity represents literally a Pagan revolt against 
Puritanism. His use of such words as " novelty, " " change " 
and "caprice " further reveal the existence of a tempera- 
ment which, having grown restive under the constraints of 
custom and recognised procedure, seeks reality in the con- 
scious exploitation of mood and whim. It was only the 
very young and the very limited in vision who imagined that 
novelty, caprice and change, associated with sensation, held 
in themselves any satisfying food for the soul ; and, if they 
did imagine such a thing, disillusion was ever waiting for the 
chance to offer them her cold companionship. As for the 
whim of artificiality, that child of decadent inquisitiveness, 
neither in life nor in art was it other than limited and exotic. 
Even the hints of the existence of perversions like homo- 
sexuality were more or less exaggerated : they would be more 
appropriate to the London of to-day than to the London 
immediately preceding the trial of Oscar Wilde. 

Aubrey Beardsley was the supreme example of the revolt 
against Nature, but it is probable that even his revolt was 
more artistic than actual. In his art he realised Oscar Wilde 's 
dictum that "The first duty in life is to be as artificial as 
possible." His pictures are at the antipodes of naturalism, 
and his unfinished romance. Under the Hill, is a mosaic of 
artificiality. Life is never left to its own unaided devices 
for a moment in this strange work, which seems at times, 
by the very heaped-up deliberation of its artifice, to satirise 
all the weaknesses of the decadence, by pressing them to 
their logical conclusion in the negation of all spontaneous 
desire save desire for the gratification of perverse sensations. 



THE NEW DANDYISM 115 

It creates life out of cosmetics and aberrations ; and Nature 
never appears except in the form of an abnormality. Could 
anything more artificial be imagined, outside of a picture 
by Beardsley, than this description of the toilet of Venus ? 
" Before a toilet that shone like the altar of Notre Dame des 
Victoires, Venus was seated in a little dressing-gown of black 
and heliotrope. The coiffeur Cosme was caring for her 
scented chevelure, and with tiny silver tongs, warm from 
the caresses of the flame, made delicious intelligent curls 
that fell as lightly as a breath about her forehead, and over 
her eyebrows, and clustered like tendrils about her neck. 
Her three favourite girls, Papplarde, Blanchemains and 
Loreyne, waited immediately upon her with perfume and 
powder in delicate fla9ons and frail cassolettes, and held in 
porcelain jars the ravishing paints prepared by Chateline 
for those cheeks and lips that had grown a little pale with 
anguish of exile. Her three favourite boys, Claude, Clair 
and Sarrasine, stood amorously about with salver, fan and 
napkin. Millarmant held a slight tray of slippers, Minette 
some tender gloves. La Popeliniere, mistress of the robes, 
was ready with a frock of yellow and yellow. La Zambinella 
bore the jewels, Florizel some flowers, Amadour a box of 
various pins, and Vadius a box of sweets. Her doves, ever 
in attendance, walked about the room that was panelled 
with gallant paintings of Jean Baptiste Dorat, and some 
dwarfs and doubtful creatures sat here and there, lolling 
out their tongues, pinching each other, and behaving oddly 
enough." 

In spite of all this artificiality, the revolt against Nature 
was not organised, but it was very real and very self-conscious 
for all that. An artificial and half-hearted attempt was 
made to revive the literary tavern, and literary discussions 
were actually heard once again in so unpromising a quarter 
as Fleet Street, as they once had been heard in the days of 
Samuel Johnson. The Rhymers' Club foregathered at the 
Cheshire Cheese, and members read their poems to one 
another and discussed the great business of poetry and life. 
This revival of the town did not last long ; a new charmer 



116 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

appeared upon the scene, and even poets fell before the 
seductions of suburban Hfe. They became victims of our 
national love of compromise, and the exodus began. " Who 
knows but that Artifice is in truth at our gates and that soon 
she may pass through our streets ? " asked Max Beerbohm, 
in 1894. The new queen was more than at our gates : she 
had entered the city ; but she was never really enthroned. 
On the eve of her accession fear struck the hearts of lesjeunes 
ecrivains ; fear, or disillusion, or the birth-pangs of middle 
age, and Queen Artifice was denied by her whilom courtiers 
from villa retreats without the city walls. The only artifice 
which actually survived was that which, like the romance in 
Kipling's poem, was already " printed and bound in little 
books. " The chance romances of the streets were abandoned 
for the reputedly more certain realities of home life. 
Bohemians cut their locks, shed their soft collars and fell 
back upon Suburbia. No more songs about Nora of the 
Pavement, no more rhapsodies about the glamour of the 
footlights, no more rhetoric about passionate and scarlet 
lives ; even dandyism of thought and word disappeared ; 
for, once you live in a suburb, there is nothing left but to^) 
become ordinary. 

The decadence suffered early from fatty degeneration of 
its naughtiness and found sanctuary in the suburbs. Even 
Max Beerbohm, during his ''first year at Oxford," saw it 
coming, as he thought of " the lurid verses written by 
young men who, in real life, know no haunt more lurid than 
a literary public-house." 



CHAPTER VII 

THE INCOMPARABLE MAX 

THE New Urbanity had no finer expression than that 
which was summed up and set forth in the person- 
ahty and art of Max Beerbohm. It was fine because 
it was at once normal and unique, sane but inconsequent, 
sedate without being serious, and mannered without empty 
severity or formahty. Max was the comic spirit of the 
Nineties, and he took his elegant way without haste or fuss, 
dropping appropriate remarks about himself apropos of 
others and vice versa ; throwing upon the decadence of his 
day the critical light of a half-appreciative humour. With- 
out being decadent, this extraordinarily modern personality 
managed to represent the decadence laughing, or rather 
smiling, at itself. 

Max Beerbohm was born in London, in August 1872, and 
it is interesting to note that he entered the world three days 
after his famous contemporary, Aubrey Beardsley, who was 
born at Brighton during the same week. He was educated 
at Charterhouse, and Merton College, Oxford, where his 
critical and satirical gifts revealed themselves in caricatures 
of masters and dons ; in a letter to The Carthusian, over the 
pseudonym, "Diogenes," complaining against the dullness 
of the school journal, and in a satire in Latin elegiacs, called 
Beccarius, twelve copies of which were privately printed, at 
the suggestion of his form-master, in the form of a four-page 
pamphlet. A rough yellow paper was used for the publica- 
tion, and the year of issue was 1890. The colour and date 
may be noted ; and, still more significant, the title of his 
first notable essay, "A Defence of Cosmetics," written at 
Oxford, and published in the first number of The Yellow Book 
in 1894. 
117 



ns THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

That year and the two following saw the reputation he had 
made at Oxford carried to London, and Max, in the second 
year of manhood, leapt into the front rank of the literary 
renaissance. During these years he contributed to The 
Yellow Book, in addition to the above-named essay, " A 
Letter to the Editor," in July 1894, and " A Note on George 
the Fourth, ' ' in October 1894. Later he contributed ' ' Dandies 
and Dandies," to Vanity, New York, February 1895 ; 
"Notes on Foppery," to The Unicorn, September 1895; 
"Be it Cosiness," to The Pageant, Christmas 1895; "A 
Good Prince," to The Savoy, January 1896; " De Natura 
Barbatulorum," to The Chajy-Book, February 1896; and 
"Poor Romeo ! " to The Yellow Book, April 1896. These 
essays were collected, revised and, in some instances, re- 
named, and published in a little red volume, with white 
paper label, under the title of The Works of Max Beerbohm, 
in 1896. During the same period he contributed caricatures 
to The Sketch, The Pall Mall Budget, Pick-me-up, The Yellow 
Book, The Octopus and The Savoy. Some of these have been 
re-issued in volume form, but the majority are buried in the 
files of those publications. 

There is nothing specially remarkable in the amount of 
work recorded above, but its distinctive quality for a young 
man still under twenty-four years of age is characteristic of 
the precocity of the period. More remarkable still, however, 
is the air of ancient wisdom which pervades the essays. 
Max Beerbohm gives the impression of having been born 
grown-up — that is to say, more or less ripe when others would 
be more or less raw and green. One can well imagine such a 
youth a few years earlier filling, in a more elegant way, the 
part of Sir W. S. Gilbert's immortal "Precocious Baby," 
Avho was born, it will be remembered, with 

" A pipe in his mouth, and a glass in his eye, 
A hat all awry. 
An octagon tie. 
And a miniature-miniature glass in his eye," 

for he assures us that at school he read Marius the Epicurean 
in bed, and found the book as fascinating as Midshipman 



THE INCOMPARABLE MAX 119 

Easy. The ripeness of maturity having estabhshed itself 
so early, it is not surprising to find Max Beerbohni announc- 
ing his intention of settling down to a cosy dotage at the 
great age of twenty-five, and, as a step towards this comfort- 
able end, publishing his collected Works, with a Bibliography 
by Mr John Lane of the Bodley Head. " Once again in the 
delusion that Art," he ^vrote, in 1895, "loving the recluse, 
would make his life happy, I wrote a little for a yellow 
quarterly and had that succes de fiasco which is always given 
to a young writer of talent. But the stress of creation soon 
overwhelmed me. Only Art with a capital H gives any 
consolations to her henchman. And I, who crave no knight- 
hood, shall write no more. I shall write no more. Already 
I feel myself to be a trifle outmoded. I belong to the 
Beardsley period. Younger men, with months of activity 
before them, with fresher schemes and notions, with newer 
enthusiasm, have pressed forward since then. Cedo juni- 
orihus. Indeed, I stand aside with no regret. For to be 
outmoded is to be a classic, if one has written well. I have 
acceded to the hierarchy of good scribes and rather like my 
niche." 

It was an age of poses, and this was one of the most re- 
freshing : all the other young men were frantically striving 
to cram into their youth the multiple experiences of a genera- 
tion weary of experiencing anything older than the moment 
before last. But Max in his undue maturity was not old ; 
he was merely trying the alleged um'uffled calm of elderliness 
on the palate of waning youth (a period when men feel older 
than they are, or will be) and, in contradistinction to the 
hot-house ardency of the houi*, he declared it to be good. 
Actually, Max was that wise thing— a ripe youth. Even 
now he seems to be immune from the trespassing years, hav- 
ing, doubtless, forestalled them in the Nineties. The elderly 
by nature do not grow old. So, having terminated his life 
as a writer in 1896 by the publication of his Works, with the 
whimsical conclusion, " Diminuendo," in which he confessed 
that he believed himself outmoded, and declared his inten- 
tion of living a life of meditation in some unfasliionable 



120 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

suburban retreat, he began writing again. His second period 
produced a fantastic tale, The Happy Hypocrite, and a com- 
panion volume to the Works, entitled More. This book, 
published in 1899, is a selection from among a considerable 
number of essays contributed to various periodicals, all of 
which, with the exception of To-Morrow, are in the normal 
current of publicity. More recently he has issued a further 
volume of essays, Yet Again (1909), a novel, Zuleika Dobson 
(1911), a volume of parodies on modern prose styles, A 
Christmas Garland (1912), several collections of caricatures, 
and a one-act comedy of his has been produced at the Palace 
Theatre. 

A notable event in his literary life was the succession to 
Bernard Shaw as dramatic critic of The Saturday Review, in 
1898, Just twelve months before Max had wTitten his own 
valedictory — "Be it Cosiness," reprinted in the Works as 
"Diminuendo," Bernard Shaw Joined the staff of The 
Saturday Review, and when ill-health forced him to relinquish 
his post he wrote an equally famous " Valedictory," announc- 
ing Max as his successor. " The younger generation is 
knocking at the door," wrote Shaw, in his generous announce- 
ment of the new-comer. " The younger generation is knock- 
ing at the door ; and as I open it there steps spritely in the 
incomparable Max." Max Beerbohm was not exactly the 
younger generation knocking at the door of dramatic criti- 
cism. Bernard Shaw was that younger generation. The 
incomparable Max had no new axe to grind. He was neither 
new nor old, progressive nor reactionary. He brought to 
the theatre nothing save his own personality, and advocat- 
ing no other cause, and upholding neither this " movement " 
nor that, he contented himsell" by recording his own dramatic 
likes and dislikes. And if his penetrating and creative criti- 
cism did not always see eye to eye with the upholders of w^hat 
was called the "higher drama," it had, in addition to its 
independence and insight, the lasting charm of good writing. 

There are those even among the appreciators of Max 
Beerbohm who seem to take special delight in laying stress 
upon what they call his cleverness and brilliance. Such 




Mk. w . 1). N'kats presenting Mr. Georc.e Moore to the 
Queen of the Fairies"" 

Bv Max Beerhohiii 



THE INCOMPARABLE MAX 121 

obvious characteristics of his work are not to be denied ; 
but, when all has been said upon the point, it is only right to 
admit that cleverness and brilliance, common enough stock- 
in-trade even of the literary huckster, are only a phase, and 
a minor phase, of the art of Max Beerbohm. First and fore- 
most, he represents a point of view. And, secondly, that 
point of view is in no sense a novelty in a civilised society. 
Every age has had its representative of a similar attitude 
towards life, in one a Horace, in another a Joseph Addison 
and, again, a Charles Lamb. In our age it is Max Beerbohm. 
He is the spirit of urbanity incarnate ; he is town. He is 
civilisation hugging itself with whimsical appreciation for a 
conservative end. " A delicate and Tory temperament pre- 
cludes me from conversing with Radicals," he says. That 
does not preclude him from laughing at institutions and what 
might be called institutional persons. But it precludes him 
from shouting and arguing loudly, in an age given overmuch 
to that sort of thing. He talks the quiet talk of culture, 
and his finely balanced essays betray conscious appreciation 
of the immemorial traditions of culture on every page. 
When he reproves, in either prose or pictures, he reproves 
with a smile. His laughter is ever Meredith's laughter of 
the mind ; that laughter which the novelist considered a 
corrective of civilised foibles because it is based in a love of 
civilisation ; the laugh that, in Meredith's own words, " will 
be of the order of the smile, finely tempered, showing sun- 
light of the mind, mental richness rather than noisy enormity. 
Its common aspect is one of unsolicitous observation, as if 
surveying a full field and having leisure to dart on its chosen 
morsels, without any fluttering eagerness. Men's future 
upon earth does not attract it ; their honesty and shapeliness 
in the present does ; and whenever they wax out of propor- 
tion, overblown, affected, pretentious, bombastical, hypo- 
critical, pedantic, fantastically delicate ; whenever it sees 
them self-deceived or hoodwinked, given to run riot in 
idolatries, drifting into vanities, congregating in absurdities, 
planning shortsightedly, plotting dementedly ; whenever 
they are at variance with their professions, and violate the 



122 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

unwi'itten but perceptible laws binding them in considera- 
tion one to another ; whenever they offend sound reason, 
fair justice ; are false in himiility or mined with conceit, 
individually or in the bulk, the Spirit overhead will look 
humanely malign and cast an oblique light on them, followed 
by volleys of silvery laughter." That benign yet critical 
spirit is the comic spirit, and it fathered the urbane essays 
and caricatm'es of Max Beerbohm. But it did not impress 
itself upon the genius of Max so as to overwhelm it with 
social purpose. It left a fair margin for the play of person- 
ality, for playfulness in itself, and even for that essential 
egotism whose special flavour captivates by insinuation 
rather than by advertisement. 

The attitude he adopts in his books is, of course, a pose, 
but he himself would not deny the imputation. On the 
contrary. His pose is as natural as anything civilised can 
be. Civilisation is the master art of the human race, and 
Max Beerbohm insists upon his civilised attributes, realising 
in his every mood and sensation that the long years of human 
development have made him a detail of that master art, just 
as a column is a detail of architecture, or rhythm of verse. 
He is not, however, an expression of the hardness of even 
civilised life ; he is the expression of its delicacy and refine- 
ment, one of the points, as it were, wherein the race in its 
artificial aspects becomes self-conscious, contemplative, 
artistic, meet for Mayfair or St James's. He is a sane mani- 
festation of dandyism. There is evidence of this in every 
line of his essays — from the careful and inimitable excellence 
of his prose to his delight, often satirical, in the use of ornate 
and exotic words. You would deduce a dandy from such 
essays, but not a D 'Or say, although Max is also an amateur 
in portraiture. D'Orsay abandoned himself to personal 
display ; he was more a fop than a dandy, and his gorgeous 
clothes were flamboyant weeds rather than the nice accentua- 
tions of a man and his works. Max is never abandoned, so 
you could never deduce a fop from his essays. What you 
could deduce would be a person more dignified, less theatrical, 
but none the less proud of himself; and the quiet eccen- 



THE INCOMPARABLE MAX 123 

tricity of his clothes would serve as a suitable backgi'ound 
for the sly brightness of his wit. For the dandyism of Max 
is intrinsic ; it is a state of being rather than an assumption ; 
it is psychological, expressing itself in wit rather than clothes ; 
and wit is the dandyism of the mind. 

It does not matter what he writes about : his subjects 
interest because he is interesting. A good essayist justifies 
any subject, and Max Beerbohm as an essayist is next in 
succession to Charles Lamb. His essays, and these are his 
greatest works, are genial invitations to discuss Max, and 
you discuss him all the more readily and with fuller relish 
because they are not too explicit ; indeed, he is often quite 
prim. " On the banner that I wave is embroidered a device 
of prunes and prisms," he says. The author of The Works of 
Max Beerbohm, of More, and of Yet Again, does not tell you 
all ; he pays you a delicate compliment by leaving you 
something to tell yourself ; the end of his ellipsis, as in all 
the great essayists, is yourself. He is quite frank with you, 
and properly genial ; but he is too fastidious to rush into 
friendship with his readers. They must deserve friendship 
first. He does not gush. In his earlier work he recalled the 
Wise Youth in Richard Feverel, and Whistler of the Ten 
O'clock. But latterly he has grown more confiding and less 
artificial. His whimseys have given place to irony — an 
irony with the flavour of a fully matured wine. But he has 
not, as yet, aeliieved great distinction in letters outside the 
medium in which he has proved himself a master. His de- 
partures from the essay, in the form of a short story and a 
novel, are, in a sense, extensions of his genius as an essayist. 
The Hajjpy Hypocrite is really an essay masquerading as a 
story, and Zuleika Dobson, a wreath of essays (including one 
exquisite gem on Oxford), aphorisms and detached reflec- 
tions, hung about a refreshingly extravagant story. The 
real Max Beerbohm is, I fancy, an essayist pure and simple, 
the essay being the inevitable medium for the expression of 
his urbane and civilised genius. There are, he has told us, a 
few people in England who are interested in repose as an art. 
He is, undoubtedly, one of them. But he is also interested 



124 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

in the art of the essay, and his essays are exquisite contribu- 
tions to that rare art. In them you see revealed the com- 
plete Max, interpreting deftly, by means of wit and humour, 
imagination and scholarship, that " uninterrupted view of 
my fellow-creatures," to use his own words, which he admits 
preferable to books, and which, doubtless, he prefers better 
than any other view in life. 

Even his caricatures are essays, and not only in the 
pictorial sense, for many of them are incomplete in them- 
selves ; they depend for their fulness of satire upon the 
carefully worded descriptions added by the artist. His 
earlier style of drawing was far simpler than the elaborate 
pictures which are the delight of so many who love fun with 
a sting in it, at the now familiar Leicester Gallery exhibitions. 
His Caricatures of Twenty-jive Gentlemen (1896) is a volume 
of drawings in simple black and white, each in the nature of 
a gi'otesque comment upon some contemporary personality. 
There is little of the deeper satire which Max afterwards 
developed. It was a decade of attitudinising, and carica- 
tures in this early volume are portraits of modern attitudes 
seen through the lens of a temperament which distorts with- 
out malice for the sake of healthy and critical laughter. 
But, with the exception of the caricature of Aubrey Beardsley, 
which combines caricature of that artist's personal appear- 
ance and his art, plus a clever comment on his exotic and 
artificial point of view in the introduction of a toy French 
poodle, there is very little below the surface of these draw- 
ings ; they lack depth. His later work in caricature is 
broader as well as deeper, and his keen sense of satirical fun 
does not hesitate to go hand-in-hand with a sharper form 
of criticism when face to face with pomposity or the self- 
sufficiency of our mandarins. The fulness of Max Beer- 
bohm's genius as a caricaturist is to be seen in tlie volume of 
coloured drawings called The PoeVs Corner (1904). Here we 
have him arousing the laughter of amusement in such draw- 
ings as "Omar Khayyam," "Dante in Oxford"; the 
laughter which is criticism in " Robert Browning taking Tea 
with the Browning Society," and " Mr Rudyard Kipling 



THE INCOMPARABLE MAX 125 

takes a bloomin' Day aht, on the blasted 'Eath, along with 
Britannia, 'is Giirl " ; and the laughter which ceases to be 
laughter in " Mr W. B. Yeats presenting Mr George Moore 
to the Queen of the Fairies," and the unforgettable "Mr 
Tennyson reading In Menioriam to his Sovereign " — surely 
among the great caricatures of all time. Max rarely knots 
the lash of his satire, but his caricatures of certain aspects of 
Court life prove him to be capable of inflicting criticisms 
which might well make their subjects wince. In the main, 
however, his caricatures suggest an amused impartiality. 
Most of us are in the habit of making to ourselves sarcastic 
or whimsical remarks about the people we meet, see or hear 
about. Max Beerbohm has put such usually silent comment 
into pictures ; and these pictures constitute in themselves a 
revival of caricature in a country that had practically lost 
the art of personal satire in pictures — and the taste for it. 



CHAPTER VIII 



SHOCKING AS A FINE ART 



" Thrice I have patted my God on the head that men miglit call me brave." — ■ 
Tomlinson, by KuuYARD Kii'LiNG. 

CLOSELY related to the new dandyism and the search 
for reahty by means of mood and sensation in their 
more sophisticated forms came the gentle art of 
astonishing the middle class. The one was in the natm-e 
of a by-product of the other. Young bloods of the period 
delighted to epater le bourgeois, as the plirase went, and 
with experience a new kind of art came into vogue : the art 
of shocking. In a sense the necessity was thrust upon the 
younger generation by the unimaginative opposition their 
demand for more life encountered at the hands of the auto- 
cracy of elderly respectability. It was really a contest be- 
tween the stupidity of vitality and the vitality of stupidity. 
For if those in authority had occasional doubts as to their 
own material importance they had none about their virtue 
and righteousness. No one, indeed, had ever contested their 
right to such views, and these views were supported by the 
full weight of traditional opinion. It was hardly siu-prising 
that they should look with suspicion upon the restiveness 
of the younger generation, because that unrest was not the 
conventional sowing of wild oats : a custom conventionally 
recognised from earliest times as the natural safety valve of 
turbulent youth. It was a far more subtle thing. To let off 
steam and settle down into the steady and respectable run 
of life is one thing, and comprehensible to elderly folk who 
have been tlirough the process, but to let off steam and refuse 
to settle down seemed serious folly, especially when argu- 
ments were advanced in defence of what, in the elderly point 
of view, was nothing less than outrageous conduct. The 

126 



SHOCKING AS A FINE ART 127 

bewildered elders of the Nineties were faced with that 
dilemma. 

At the same time, the gospel of epater le bourgeois was in 
the main less an actuality than an idea seeking expression in 
life and using Art as its advocate. True it had its practical 
exponents, but these were generally confined to the more 
literary and artistic circles, and for the general public they 
became a part of the mythology of the Nineties even during 
the decade. Rumoiu's of strange wickedness were heard 
in many directions. Names were mentioned ; and certain 
artists and minor poets gained repute by their alleged 
association with vice. It was fashionable in " artistic " 
circles to drink absinthe and to discuss its " cloudy green " 
suggestiveness ; and other hitherto exotic drugs were also 
called into the service of these dilettanti of sin. Certain 
drugs seemed to gather about them an atmosphere of 
romance during these years, and all sorts of stunulants and 
soporifics, from incense and perfumes to opium, hashish, and 
various forms of alcohol, were used as means to extend 
sensation beyond the range of ordinary consciousness, along 
with numerous well-known and half-known physical aids to 
passionate experience. The age was extraordinarily sensi- 
tive, for instance, to the suggestiveness of sex. The subject 
was discussed with a new interest and a new frankness in 
essays and novels and plays ; but for one person interested 
in the medico-legal sides of the questions raised, a dozen 
must have been drawn to the subject by a craving for for- 
bidden fruit. Thus sex-inquisitiveness awoke slumbering 
aberrations in some and suggested them to others, with the 
result that definite perverse practices became associated with 
the " advanced " movement. 

The appearance in literature and art of this new outlook 
upon life bore with it all the attractiveness of novelty and 
daring, and the irritation such things arouse among a people 
who have lived for many years under the impression that 
morals, and even ideas, were more or less fixed. But the 
very spirit of the time contested such complaisance. An 
imp of disquiet was abroad, scattering notes of interrogation 



128 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

like confetti of fire among cherished principles and customs. 
The young men enjoyed the fun as they rushed about 
smashing up the intellectual and moral furniture of their 
parents. A generation nourished by the high normalities 
of Tennyson and Browning, which had thought Matthew 
Arnold (the critic) rather daring, and which had been nearly 
scared out of its Swinburne and its Rossetti by Robert 
Buchanan's attack on " The Fleshly School of Poetry," had 
every reason to be horrified by the appearance of Ibsen and 
Nietzsche. Many shook their heads ominously and took 
refuge in Locksley Hall ; 

" Authors — essayist, atheist, novelist, realist, rhymester, play your 
part. 
Paint the mortal shame of nature with the living hues of Art. 

Rip your brothers' vices open, strip your own foul passions bare ; 
Down with Reticence, down with Reverence — forward — naked — 
let them stare. " 

Others took the change in better humour, and either joined 
the dance or became interested spectators. 

Influences behind the art of shocking were not entirely 
French, though the French decadents played their part. 
Throughout the whole of the period English publishers were 
issuing excellent translations of modern masterpieces from 
many European idea-centres, and in this way such writers as 
Tolstoy, Ibsen, Zola, Nietzsche, D'Annunzio and Turgenev 
became familiar aids to advanced thought in this country. 
Hitherto the language barrier had left these writers the 
property of the cultured classes, as was the case with the 
French decadents, the chief of whom have not even now been 
given adequate representation in English. The introduc- 
tion of such writers was like the opening up of a new country 
to be immediately settled by ardent colonists. Their ideas 
were eagerly absorbed and, what is more interesting, used in 
a vigorous criticism of life. But there is little doubt that 
the first foreign ethical influence of the period was Henrik 
Ibsen, whose method of criticising conventional morals by 
means of drama had a profound effect upon thinking people 



SHOCKING AS A FINE ART 129 

and dramatists. Nietzsche was known only to the few who 
read German at the beginning of the deeade, but before the 
death of the old century the first attempt at a complete 
edition of the works of Friedrich Nietzsche was made by 
Henry & Co, The enterprise, however, aroused so little 
interest that it was abandoned after the production of four 
volumes. It was not until 1896 that any general interest 
in Nietzsche's ideas began in this country. In that year 
Havelock Ellis contributed a study of the German phil- 
osopher to The Savoy, and there were several other notices 
and criticisms in the reviews. The earliest reference to 
Nietzsche in the literature of the period is to be found in 
George Egerton's Keynotes (1892), but there are several 
pages devoted to his ideas in the Sentences and Paragraphs 
of John Davidson (1893), who seems to have been the only 
writer of the time to have come directly under the spell of 
the Nietzschean philosophy. The earliest British journal 
avowedly upholding an " egoistic philosophy " was started 
in 1898, under the title of The Eagle and the Serpent. It 
bore beneath its title these words from Zarathustra : " The 
proudest animal under the sun and the wisest animal under 
the sun have set out to reconnoitre " ; and for further 
explanation the following : — 

''Dedicated to the Philosophy of Life Enunciated by 
Nietzsche, Stirner, Thoreau and Goethe, The Eagle 
AND THE Serpent labours for the Recognition of 
New Ideals in Politics and Sociology, in Ethics and 
Philosophy, in Literature and Art. 



A Race of Altruists is necessarily a Race of 

Slaves. 
A Race of Freemen is necessarily a Race of 

Egoists. 
The Great are only great because we are on our 

knees. Let us rise ! " 

I 



130 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

This curious and entertaining little paper was published 
at first bi-monthly, and then occasionally and fitfully, until 
the last number appeared in 1902. 

One foreign influence making for frankness of expression 
was that of Emile Zola, whose books were issued in a well- 
translated, although somewhat expurgated, edition, at a 
popular price. Thousands of these were sold and read, thus 
preparing the way for the books of our native realists like 
George Moore, whose Esther Waters gave one of the most 
violent shocks of the period ; Arthur Morrison, with his 
Tales of Mean Streets and A Child of the J ago, and Somerset 
Maugham's Liza of Lambeth. 

Under such influences the art of shocking rattled along 
merrily enough, and claimed many devotees. These may 
be divided rouglily into two classes ; the Individual and the 
Social. In the former there were the typical men of the 
literary movement of the Nineties and their followers, 
astonishing either from innate addiction to caprice, irre- 
pressibility of whim, love of experiment or, as was often 
the case with the rank and file, mere cussedness. Certain 
demonstrations in the art of shocking recall the story of the 
man who, seeing the father of decadent poetry, remarked to 
a friend : " There goes Baudelaire. I wager he is going to 
sleep under the bed to-night instead of in it, just to astonish 
it. " Among the art products of the more important members 
of this class stand the paradoxes of Oscar Wilde, the pictures 
of Aubrey Beardsley, the early poems of Arthur Symons and 
the satires of Max Beerbohm. But many of the writers who 
might have astonished the middle classes by administering 
artistic shocks put other qualities into their art and filled 
their lives with astonishing incidents. Nothing is more re- 
markable in looking back at the Nineties than to note how 
Death has gathered to himself so many of the period's 
most characteristic and most interesting figures. All of 
these men " lived their own lives," and when whim or Fate 
led them along perilous paths they suffered the consequences. 
Most of them died young, several were scarcely more than 
youths ; some died of diseases which might have been 



SHOCKING AS A FINE ART 131 

checked or prevented in more careful lives ; some were con- 
demned to death at an early age by miserable maladies, and 
some were so burdened by the malady of the soul's unrest 
that they voluntarily crossed the borderland of life. It 
would seem as if these restless and tragic figures thirsted 
so much for life, and for the life of the hour, that they put 
the cup to their lips and drained it in one deep draught : 
perhaps all that was mortal of them felt so essential to the 
Nineties that life beyond the decade might have been unbear- 
able. Oscar Wilde died in 1900 at the age of forty-four ; 
Aubrey Beardsley died in 1898, aged twenty-six ; Ernest 
Dowson, in 1900, aged thirty-three ; Charles Conder, in 
1909, aged forty-one ; Lionel Johnson, in 1902, aged thirty- 
five ; Hubert Crackanthorpe, in 1896, aged thirty-one ; 
Henry Harland, in 1905, aged forty-four ; Francis Thomp- 
son, in 1907, aged forty-eight ; and John Davidson, in 1909, 
aged fifty-two. 

The second section of those who astonished the middle 
classes was composed of revolutionists and reformers who 
shocked by expressing the newly awakened social conscious- 
ness which demanded change in the affairs of the State — 
wider margins of personal freedom and better opportunities 
of life and comfort for all. First among these came Bernard 
Shaw, who introduced a new subjective daring into dialectics 
and social controversy, avowedly designed to shock, prod 
and irritate the social consciousness of the bourgeoisie into 
practical moral and economic zeal. Grant Allen wrote The 
Woman Who Did, also in the same spirit, to draw attention 
to the difficulties of our marriage customs. The direct in- 
fluence behind this group, although he did not supply it 
with all its ideas, was Ibsen. The Norwegian dramatist- 
philosopher suggested the attitude of the moral revolt. It 
was he, and not Nietzsche, who first taught the Englishman 
and Englishwoman to " transvalue their values," to examine 
with a critical and restless eye the moral scaffolding of 
their civilisation, and to suggest to them where they would 
find weaknesses. And the result was that the middle 
classes were more shocked by this attack than by any 



132 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

other astonishing thing of the period — save the fall of 
Osear Wilde. 

Different in aim and method as these two classes of artists 
in astonishment may have been, they were each the outcome 
of the same demand for more freedom, more experience, 
more sensation, more life. What was happening in England 
was but the echo of what had been happening in Western 
Europe for a couple of decades. The idea of self-realisation, 
as old as Emerson, and older, was at the root of the modern 
attitude. The younger generation became acutely conscious 
of parental control. Turgenev had interpreted the attitude 
in its broader aspects in Fathers and Children, which was 
published in Russia as long ago as 1862. But the nihilism 
of Turgenev 's great creation, Bazarov, was not at the back 
of the English revolt, except in a common desire of freedom. 
Nor were the men of the Nineties wholly absorbed in material 
experiences. Every physical excess of the time went hand 
in hand with spiritual desire. The soul seemed to be trying 
the way of the flesh with calamitous desperation. Long 
years of Puritanism and rationalism had proved the folly of 
salvation by morality and salvation by reason, so in a fit 
of despair the unsatisfied spirit of the age sought respite in 
salvation by sin. The recognition of sin was the beginning 
of the revolt against rationalism and the beginning of the 
revival of mysticism. The latter revealed itself in the Theo- 
sophical movement, in the sudden popularity of Maurice 
Maeterlinck, and in numerous conversions to Rome, the first 
and last home of Christian mysticism. 

The decadence was a form of soul-sickness, and the only 
cure for the disease was mysticism. But there was also 
another form of the soul's unrest which sprang more out of 
excessive vitality straining at the leash of custom. It was 
the unrest of an age which had grown too big for its boots. 
New conceptions of life and morality and mankind were de- 
manded. Generations had been brought up in the faith that 
there were no ideas higher than man and God. Many were 
reasserting the democratic faith that the voice of the people 
was the voice of God. But Max Stirner and Heiu-ik Ibsen 



SHOCKING AS A FINE ART 133 

were gi'adually insinuating the idea that the highest of all 
things was not mankind but the self, the individual ego, and 
thus preparing the way for Nietzsche, who foretold the super- 
session of man : " Man is a bridge connecting animal and 
superman — a bridge thrown across a precipice." 

But the Nietzschean idea, as I have pointed out, did not 
reach this country until the later Nineties, Ibsen was the 
social stimulus to revolt. His plays were being read and 
acted, and the idea of a self-centred personality was generally 
accepted by the "intellectuals." "So to conduct one's life 
as to realise oneself — this seems to me the liighest attainment 
possible to a human being," Ibsen had written to Bjonison ; 
and again in a letter to George Brandes he had said : " The 
great thing is not to allow oneself to be frightened by the 
venerableness of an institution. The state has its roots in 
Time : it will have its culmination in Time. Greater things 
than it will fall ; all religion will fall. Neither the conceptions 
of morality nor those of art are eternal. To how much are 
we really obliged to pin our faith ? Who will vouch for it 
that two and two do not make five up in Jupiter ? " Those 
words were written as far back as 1871, but it took twenty 
years for their sense as expressed in the plays of Ibsen to 
be fully appreciated. By the middle of the Nineties the 
attitude was so much to the taste that many were quite 
ready to say, and in a way prove, that it was not necessary 
to go as far as Jupiter to find two and two making five. 

In the main, however, the majority were content to prove 
that two and two made four ; but they insisted upon proving 
it for themselves ; that the proof Avas already established 
and long since taken for granted was quite sufficient to 
arouse the gravest suspicions. " Whenever people agree 
with me, I always feel I must be wrong," said Cecil Graham, 
in Lady Wmder-tnere's Fan, voicing a characteristic whim. 
This superior attitude was, of course, far from the general 
attitude of the masses. They probably knew little of those 
adventures among ideas and sensations which occupied more 
leism-ed and more cultured people. The art of shocking the 
middle classes existed mainly among members of that class. 



134 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

It was an internal revolt. " Nothing," said Arthur Symons, 
" not even conventional virtue, is so provincial as conven- 
tional vice ; and the desire to ' bewilder the middle classes' 
is itself middle class " : which is perfectly true, but the tend- 
ency is not to be belittled for all that. It showed that the 
bourgeoisie was capable of producing critics of itself, however 
distasteful these proved to be. The earliest critics of the middle 
classes had always arisen within the pale even when they 
had been Socialists, as in the instances of Ferdinand Lassalle, 
Karl Marx and, in our own time, William Morris, H. M. 
Hyndman and Bernard Shaw. The conversion to Socialism 
of that genius of bewilderment, Oscar Wilde, must not be 
taken too seriously from the Socialistic point of view, as to a 
large extent, the famous essay on The Soul of Man under 
Socialism was little more than an elaborately shocking ad- 
mission ; for it must not be forgotten that it was a much 
more daring tiling to announce oneself a Socialist then than 
now — it was almost as daring for a middle-class girl to go out 
unchaperoned, and shocked almost as much. 

Literature was drawn into the firing line of the times. 
Novels and plays not only became more outspoken, but 
sentences became more epigrammatic and thoughts more 
paradoxical. No one could say how the most innocent of 
sentences might explode in its last word, any more than one 
could prophesy what somersault one's favourite belief might 
take in its latest incarnation. Surprises lurked in the most 
surprising literary places as though to reflect and keep time 
with the reshuffling of habits and conventions. And just as 
modern literature has gained in brightness by the experi- 
ence, so the adventure has familiarised us with the need of 
variety in personality and of wider margins of freedom for 
its expression. 



CHAPTER IX 

PURPLE PATCHES AND FINE PHRASES 

" I am going to sit up all night with Reggie, saying mad scarlet things, such 
as Walter Pater loves, and waking the night with silver silences. . . . Come, 
Reggie, let us go to the smoking-room, since we are left alone. I will be brilliant 
for you as I have never been brilliant for my publishers. I will talk to you as 
no character in my plays has ever talked. Come ! The young Endymion stirs 
in his dreams, and the pale-souled Selene watches him from her pearly car. 

"The shadows on the lawns are violet, and the stars wash the spaces of the 
sky with primrose and with crimson. The night is old yet. Let me be brilliant, 
dear boy, or I feel that I shall weep for sheer wittiness, and die, as so many 
have died, with all my epigrams still in me." — Esme Amarinth in The Green 
Carnation. 

JUST as the personal revolt of the decadence ran to 
dandyism, so its literature reached the same goal. 
There were endless discussions about " style," and many 
were of the opinion that the ultimate form of a thought, 
its manner of word and sjTitax, was the thing in itself. 
Words for words' sake was a kind of gospel, and, following 
the habit of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, poets and prose-poets 
would devote long hours to word-hunting. They would 
search through dictionaries and ancient tomes with the hot 
enthusiasm of the hunter, tracking down the " unique word," 
and hoping to capture it alive for exhibition in the gardens 
of modern literature. Authors with a personal style were 
cultivated and upheld. The " Purple Patches " in Ruskin, 
Pater, and in Edward Fitzgerald's Rubdiydt of Omar Khay- 
yam, were relished with voluble delight. Keats came in for 
a new admiration, and Rossetti 's poems satisfied the call of 
the hour by the suggestive ardency of their " vagueness and 
utterness, " to use words applied by George Moore to the poems 
of Verlaine. The strong and deep wit of George Meredith, 
with its subtle surprises, aroused even greater delight, and 
the meticulous prose of Robert Louis Stevenson, with its 

135 



136 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

almost feminine echoes of Meredith, enraptured those who 
were just inheriting the newer culture. All this concern for 
language as language, for the set and balance of words, was 
not, however, entirely of native origin. It was, as in the 
case of so much that was new and strange, partially derived 
from the French decadent movement which was influencing 
the whole of Europe. 

Many years ago Theophile Gautier described the decadent 
style as " ingenious, complex, learned, full of shades of mean- 
ing and investigation, always extending the boundaries of 
language, borrowing from all the technical vocabularies, 
taking colom-s from all palettes, notes from all keyboards, 
forcing literary expression of that which is most ineffable, 
and in form the vaguest and most fleeting outlines ; listen- 
ing, that it may translate them, to the subtle confidences of 
the neuropath, to the avowals of ageing and depraved passion, 
and to the singular hallucinations of fixity of idea verging to 
madness. This decadent style is the last effort of language 
to express everything to the last extremity." Further, he 
compares this style with that of the later Roman empire, 
when language became " mottled with the greenness of de- 
composition," in a word, gamy {faisandee). But in England 
literary style developed hardly more than a faint flavour of 
that gamy expression associated with the work of Baudelaire 
and Huysmans, and it approximated more nearly to its 
French influences in, as might be expected, Oscar Wilde and 
Aubrey Beardsley. 

One recalls many a wonderful passage in Dorian Gray 
wherein Oscar Wilde turned the results of his word-hunting 
into prose passages entirely new to English literature ; 

"He would often spend a whole day settling and re- settling 
in their cases the various stones that he had collected, such 
as the olive-green chrysoberyl that turns red by lamplight, 
the cymophane with its wire-like line of silver, the pistachio- 
coloured peridot, rose-pink and wine-yellow topazes, car- 
buncles of fiery scarlet with tremulous four-rayed stars, 
flame-red cinnamon stones, orange and violet spinels, and 



PURPLE PATCHES AND FINE PHRASES 137 

amethysts with their alternate layers of ruby and sapphire. 
He loved the red-gold of the sunstone, and the moonstone's 
pearly whiteness, and the broken rainbow of the milky opal. 
He procured from Amsterdam three emeralds of extraordinary 
size and richness of colour, and had a turquoise de la vieille 
roche that was the envy of all connoisseurs." 

Aubrey Beardsley had so keen a sense of verbal deport- 
ment that there is conscious style in almost every sentence 
he wrote. So insistent is this sense of form that the matter 
of his slight literary achievement, unusual though it is, 
retires before his manner. So mannered was he at times 
that one questions his sincerity. It is as though he adopted 
a decadent prose as a prank and awoke to find the result a 
masterpiece. His preciosity is so ordered and elegant, and 
so deliberate in aim and intent, that it becomes something 
more than a freakish whim. Could prose, for instance, 
have more gi*ace than the dedicatory epistle of Utider 
the Hill ? 

" I nmst crave your forgiveness for addressing you in a 
language other than the Roman," he writes, " but my small 
freedom in Latinity forbids me to wander beyond the idiom 
of my vernacular. I would not for the world that your 
delicate Southern ear should be olfended by a barbarous 
assault of rude and Gothic words ; but methinks no language 
is rude that can boast polite wi'iters, and not a few have 
flom-ished in this country in times past, bringing our common 
speech to very great perfection. In the present age, alas ! 
our pens are ravished by unlettered authors and unmannered 
critics, that make a havoc rather than a building, a wilder- 
ness rather than a garden. But, alack ! what boots it to 
drop tears upon the preterit ? " 

There we have the polite writer of all time, deftly using 
the " conceit " of his period with a relish appropriate enough 
in a writer whose literature was a by-product of a graphic 
art whose every line was fraught with strutting imagery 
and elegantly laboured poses. " From the point of a precise 



138 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

toilet," he writes, in the opening paragraph of the romance, 
" the fingers wandered, quelHng the little mutinies of cravat 
and ruffle." Again he speaks of "taper-time" and the 
" slender voices of the fairies," and of Venus standing before 
her mirror, " in a flutter of frilled things," displaying neck 
and shoulders " so wonderfully drawn " and " little malicious 
breasts " which were " full of the irritation of loveliness 
that can never be entirely comprehended, or ever enjoyed to 
the utmost. " Master of the Purple Patch, Beardsley knew 
also how to weave gorgeous tapestries of words delighting 
by their very richness : 

"The place where he stood waved drowsily with strange 
flowers heavy with perfume, dripping with odours. Gloomy 
and nameless weeds not to be found in Mentzelius. Huge 
moths so richly winged they must have banqueted upon 
tapestries and royal stuffs, slept on the pillars that flank 
either side of the gateway, and the eyes of all the moths 
remained open, and were burning and bursting with a mesh 
of veins. The pillars were fashioned in some pale stone, and 
rose up like hymns in the praise of Venus, for, from cap to 
base, each one was carved with loving sculptures, showing 
such a cunning invention and such a curious knowledge that 
Tannhauser lingered not a little in reviewing them." 

In their search for reality, and their desire to extend the 
boundaries of sensation, the writers of the Eighteen Nineties 
sought to capture and steep their art in what was sensuous 
and luscious, in all that was colom'cd and perfumed. Oscar 
Wilde never tired of decorating his prose with unfamiliar 
imagery and incongruous colour words. He mastered every 
literary fashion of the time, wielding with like skill the 
methods of purple patch, preciosity, epigram, paradox and 
conceit. Dorian Gray is a piece of literary jewellery ; pea- 
cock plii'ases, glowing periods and verbal surprises embellish- 
ing every page. He speaks of the sunlight slipping " over 
the polished leaves " ; of " the green lacquer leaves of the 
ivy "; and "the blue cloud-shadows " chasing "themselves 
across the grass like swallows " ; of " the stained trumpet of 



PURPLE PATCHES AND FINE PHRASES 139 

Tyrian convolvulus." "The green night of its leaves will 
hold its purple stars," he says of the clematis. An emotional 
change in a woman gives him a chance of such literary efflor- 
escence as : "A rose shook in her blood, and shadowed her 
cheeks. Quick breath parted the petals of her lips." And 
the homogenic love of Michelangelo he describes as being 
"carved in the coloured marbles of a sonnet- sequence." 
The following colour phrases are common throughout his 
works: — "nacre-coloured air," "apricot-coloured light," 
" rose-coloured joy," " crocus-coloured robe," and " sulphur- 
coloured roses." "Swinging censers" are compared with 
"great gilt flowers," and he speaks of the" jade-green piles 
of vegetables " in Covent Garden. 

The keen colour sense of the period manifested itself in 
many other directions, particularly in certain characteristic 
book titles, such as The Yellow Book, Grey Roses, The Green 
Carnation, A Yellow Aster, Green Fire and The Colour of Life. 
It would seem as though the Impressionist painters had made 
the world more conscious of the effects of light, and inspired 
writers with a desire to seek out colour visions for themselves, 
although most were content to look at the new prismatic 
sights through the eyes of Monet and Pissarro. In an earlier 
chapter I referred to the fashion of yellow, but this colour 
was not the only fashion. Green had still many devotees. 
Oscar Wilde had referred to this taste as " that curious love 
of green which in individuals is always the sign of subtle 
artistic temperament, and in nations is said to denote a laxity 
if not a decadence of morals." Richard Le Gallicnne, prob- 
ably taking his cue from the foregoing famous declaration, 
wrote, in Prose Fancies (second series, 1896) : " Green must 
always have a large following among artists and art lovers ; 
for, as has been pointed out, an appreciation of it is a sure 
sign of a subtle artistic temperament. There is something 
not quite good, something almost sinister, about it — at least, 
in its more complex forms, though in its simple form, as we 
find it in outdoor nature, it is innocent enough ; and, in- 
deed, is it not used in colloquial metaphor as an adjective 
for innocence itself ? Innocence has but two colours, white 



1^0 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

or green. But Becky Sharp's eyes also were green, 
and the green of the aesthete does not suggest innocence. 
There will always be wearers of the gi-een carnation; 
but the popular vogue which green has enjoyed for the 
last ten or fifteen years is probably passing. Even the 
aesthete himself would seem to be growing a little weary of 
its indefinitely divided tones, and to be anxious for a colour 
sensation somewhat more positive than those to be gained 
from almost imperceptible nuances of green. Jaded with 
over-refinements and super-subtleties, we seem in many 
directions to be harking back to the primary colours of life. 
Blue, crude and unsoftcned, and a form of magenta have 
recently had a short innings ; and now the triumph of yellow 
IS nnminent. Of course, a love for green implies some regard 
for yellow, and in our so-called aesthetic renaissance the sun- 
flower went before the green carnation— which is, indeed, 
the badge of but a small schism of aesthetes, and not worn by 
the great body of the more catholic lovers of beauty. " But 
an examination of the belles lettres of the period proves that 
neither yellow nor gi-een predominated, but that the average 
taste seemed to lead towards the sum-total and climax of all 
colours — white. 

White gleamed through the most scarlet desires and the 
most purple ideas of the decade, just as its experimental vices 
went hand in hand with virtue. In midmost rapture of 
abandonment the decadents adored innocence, and the fre- 
quent use of the idea of whiteness, with its correlatives, 
silver, moonlight, starlight, ivory, alabaster and marble, was 
perhaps more than half-conscious symbohsm. It had also a 
dash of the debauchee's love of virginity. 

Walter Pater named a noble chapter in Marius the Epi- 
curean, "White Nights," after the name of the house of 
Marius, with full sense of the symbolic meaning of the word ; 
and he bore out this idea by a quotation from an old German 
mystic, who said : " The red rose came first, the mystery of 
so-called white things," as being " ever an afterthought— the 
doubles, or seconds, of real things, and themselves but half- 
real, half-material— the white queen, the white witch, the 



PURPLE PATCHES AND FINE PHRASES 141 

White Mass, which, as the Black Mass is a travesty of the 
true Mass turned to evil by hon-ible old witches, is celebrated 
by young candidates for the priesthood with an unconse- 
crated host, by way of rehearsal." So the idea of whiteness 
had relationship in the work of decadent writers with the 
" so-called mystery of white things." No other poet of the 
period expressed the idea of the mystery of white innocence 
so immaculately as Alice Meynell : 

" She walks— the lady of my delight— 

A shepherdess of sheep. 
Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white ; 

She guards them from the steep. 
She feeds them on the fragrant height, 

And folds them in for sleep."- 

The same idea found exponents in other poets. Francis 
Thompson refers to " a fair white silence." Ernest Dowson 
was dominated by a sense of whiteness. One cannot forget 
his " dancing to put thy pale lost lilies out of mind," and The 
Pierrot of the Minute is a veritable symphony in white. He 
calls for " white music," and the Moon Maiden rides through 
the skies " drawn by a team of milk-white butterflies," and 
further on in the same poem we have a palace of many 
rooms : 

" Within the fairest, clad in purity. 
Our mother dwelt immemorially : 

Moon-calm, moon-pale, with moon-stones on her gown. 
The floor she treads with little pearls is sown. . . ." 

And in another poem he sings : 

" Mark the day white on which the Fates have smiled. -' 

The recognition and use of the idea of white was, of course, 

not always mystical, or even symbolical ; in the majority of 

cases it was frankly sensuous, following in words that delight 

in whiteness which Whistler had expressed in pictures. 

W. B. Yeats sings of the "white breast of the dim sea," 

Lionel Johnson of 

" Cloisters, in moonlight 
' ' Branching dark, or touched with white : 



142 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

Round old, chill aisles, wIicmg nioon-sniittcn 
J3lanchcs the Orale, writlcii 
Under each worn, old-world face 
Graven on Death's holy place ! " 

Oscar >Vildo refers often to white things : " She sliook 
like a white narcissus " ; " bhie petals of llanie rimmed 
with white fire " ; and " white vultures with gilded claws." 
Nor nuist we overlook the ''milk-white " unicorn in Aubrey 
Bcai'dsley's romance. Hubert Crackanthorpe's purple 
patches of travel, Vignettes, has a reference to some white 
thing on almost every page — white towns, white houses, 
white roads and white churches. One of the most charm- 
ing of Arthur Symons' more artificial lyrics celebrates 
whiteness in girlhood : 

-' White girl, your flesh is lilies 
Grown 'nealh a frozen moon. 
So still is 

The rapture of your swoon 
Of whiteness, snow or lilies."- 

And one of Richard Le Galliennc's most "precious" 
Prose Fancies is dedicated, under the title, " White Soul," to 
the same theme in womanhood. It is prefaced by these lines : 

" What is so white in the world, my love, 
As thy maiden soul — 
The dove that Hies 
Softl}'^ all day within thy eyes. 
And nests within thine heart at night ? 
Nothing so white.'* 

In the first paragraph of this essay he demands with quaint 
conceit the whole gamut of whiteness for the glorification of 
such innocence : " Whitest paper, newest ])en, ear sensitive, 
tremulous ; heart pure and mind open, broad and clear as 
the blue air for the most delicate gossamer thoughts to wing 
through ; and snow-white words, lily-white words, words of 
ivory and pearl, words of silver and alabaster, words white 
as hawthorn and daisy, words white as morning milk, 
words ' whiter than Venus' doves, and softer than the do^\^l 
beneath their wings ' — virginal, saintlike, nunnery words." 



PdRPr.K PATCHES AND FINE PHRASES Uti 

IJut always the outstanding literary accessory of the 
Nineties was surprise, in the form of paradox, or often little 
more than verbal. In the latter surprise found expression in 
the use of strange words, the result of resurrections from old 
books or from scientific and technical sources, the jargon of 
special sections of humanity, and the slang of the streets. 
French words and phrases were also in great favour. 
Several of the most striking ver})al effects of the time were 
obtained by the transposition of words from one set of ideas 
to another, after the manner of Baudelaire's theory of corre- 
spondences. Whistler was the earliest to use the method in 
this country when he named pictures after musical terms, 
"Symphonies," "Harmonies" and "Arrangements." 
Henley, imitating Whistler, took the idea a step further by 
naming the poems in his London Voluntaries, " Andante 
con Moto," " Schcrzando, " " Largo c Mesto " and "Allegro 
Maestoso." From such normal manifestations of the theory 
it spread through all definitely fin de siede writing from 
Henry Harland's reference to a young person wfio " took to 
rouge and powder, and introduced falsetto notes into her 
toilet " ; George Egerton's firelight which picks out " auto- 
graphs past emotions have traced " on a woman's face ; to 
Oscar Wilde's already quoted " coloured marble of a sonnet- 
sequence." Aubrey Beardsley's "decollete spirits of aston- 
ishing conversation," and Richard Le Oallienne's "London 
spread out beneath us like a huge black velvet flower, and 
rows of ant-like fire-flies moving in slow zigzag processions 
along and across its petals." 

The use of strange words and bizarre images was but 
another outcome of the prevalent desire to astonish. At no 
period in English history had the obvious and the common- 
place fjcen in such disrepute. The age felt it was complex 
and sought to interpret its complexities, not by simplicity, 
in spite of Oscar Wilde's statement that simplicity was the 
last refuge of complexity, but by suddenness of epigram and 
paradox combined with delicate nuances of expression. 
Literary style resembled more than anything else a dance in 
quick time gradually resolving itself into the stateliness of 



144 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

the minuet. So fearful were writers of being convicted of 
obviousness that they often convicted themselves of obscurity. 
In the same way they admired what were then considered 
to be the obscurities of Meredith. Younger writers realised 
the need of a suggestive note in literature. They agreed 
with Meredith that " the art of the pen is to rouse the inward 
vision," and instead of labouring protracted descriptions 
they sought to " spring imagination with a word or a phrase." 
Literature that had been exposite became apposite. Fine 
shades of meaning and niceties of observation slipped into 
swift revealing sentences, and for the first time temperament 
was studied as a thing in itself. The idea of Impressionism 
also dominated style, but the best writers end at intensity, 
suggestiveness, reality and, above all, brightness, rather than 
novelty, preferring to achieve this last as a by-product. 
They strove to create what was called "atmosphere," leav- 
ing much to the intelligence of the reader, who, to do him 
justice, often proved himself worthy of the compliment. 
Such volumes of studies in Impressionism as George 
Egerton's Keynotes, G. S. Street's Episodes, Hubert Crackan- 
thorpe's Wreckage, George Fleming's Women's Tragedies, 
Henry Harland's Mademoiselle Miss and The Lady Para- 
mount, John Oliver Hobbes' SoTne Emotions and a Moral, 
Vincent O 'Sullivan's and — to a lesser degree — the studies of 
Ella d'Arcy and H. D. Lowry are steeped in this new spirit. 
Whilst Max Beerbohm, Oscar Wilde, Richard Le Gallienne, 
Alice Meynell and Vernon Lee distilled their own personality 
into essays in the same key. The subtle intensity of this 
style may be illustrated by a quotation from Keynotes : 

" The paleness of some strong feeling tinges her face, a 
slight trembling runs through her frame. Her inner soul- 
struggle is acting as a strong developing fluid upon a highly 
sensitised plate ; anger, scorn, pity, contempt chase one 
another like shadows across her face. Her eyes rest upon 
the empty frame, and the plain white space becomes alive 
to her. Her mind's eye fills it with a picture it once held in 
its dainty embrace. A rare head amongst the rarest heads 



PURPLE PATCHES AND FINE PHRASES 145 

of men, with its crest of hair tossed back from the great brow, 
its proud poise and the impress of grand confident compelling 
genius that rev^eals itself one scarce knows how ; with the 
brute possibility of an untamed, natural man lurking about 
the mouth and powerful throat. She feels the subduing 
smile of eyes that never failed to make her weak as a child 
under their gaze, and tame as a hungry bird. She stretches 
out her hands with a pitiful little movement, and then, re- 
membering, lets them drop and locks them until the knuckles 
stand out whitely. She shuts her eyes, and one tear after 
the other starts from beneath her lids, trickles down her 
cheeks, and drops with a splash into her lap. She does not 
sob, only cries quietly and she sees, as if she held the letter in 
her hand, the words that decided her fate." 

Alice Meynell in her essays is equally modern with less 
emotional themes as, for instance, in the opening essay of her 
volume The Colour of Life : 

" Red has been praised for its nobiUty as the colour of Ufe. 
But the true colour of life is not red. Red is the colour of 
violence or of life broken, edited and published. Or if red is 
indeed the colour of hfe, it is so only on condition that it is not 
seen. Once fully visible, red is the colour of life violated, 
and in the act of betrayal and of waste. Red is the secret of 
life, and not the manifestation thereof. It is one of the things 
the value of which is secrecy, one of the talents that are to be 
hidden in a napkin. The true colour of life is the colour of 
the body, the colour of the covered red, the implicit and not 
explicit red of the living heart and the pulses. It is the 
modest colour of the unpublished blood." 

The arts of epigram and paradox with their repeated 
surprises were so commanded by the genius of Oscar Wilde 
that others who followed in his steps tended to appear like 
imitators. There is something preposterous and irresistibly 
funny about his wittiest half truth, and the best of his state- 
ments were often no more than that. "One of those 

K 



146 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

characteristic British faces that, once seen, are never re- 
membered," is a good specimen of Wilde's method, with 
such sayings as : " Brute reason is quite unbearable. There 
is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the in- 
tellect " ; and " Her capacity for family affection is extra- 
ordinary. When her third husband died, her hair turned 
quite gold from grief," and " In married life three is company 
and two is none "; and "Only dull people are brilliant at 
breakfast " ; and again " One can resist everything except 
temptation." The fun of such sayings does not only depend 
upon the shock of half truth, they contain also a wild philo- 
sophy which is irresistible because it defies immediate re- 
futation by sheer brightness. Wilde created a fashion in 
such sayings ; the word " brilliant " was appropriately used 
to describe them, and their popularity created a widely 
practised game of intellectual frivolity. It was not fashion- 
able, as the saying went, " to take yourself seriously," and 
the verbal cleverness invented by Oscar Wilde was adopted 
cheerfully as a mask for the seriousness of life. 

One writer whose gifts of wit were at all comparable with 
those of Oscar Wilde had the courage to use his brilliance to 
throw light on a definite moral purpose. The attitude he 
adopted was in the nature of a Puritan reply to the paganism 
of Wilde, and he used similar weapons with equal skill, drama 
and fiction, conversation and oratory, flashing sharp with 
a more solid intention. " Better see rightly on a pound a 
week," he said, "than squint on a million." "Freedom," 
he said again, " means responsibility ; that's why most 
people fear it." There was something more than cleverness 
in such sayings, something more than art. Bernard Shaw, 
who uttered them, brought with him an atmosphere of con- 
viction. That attitude insisted upon art and cleverness 
being discontented mth themselves ; it strove to bring 
intellect back once more from the contemplation of itself 
to the realisation of a more orderl}^ life. 



CHAPTER X 

THE DISCOVERY OF THE CELT 

"Strange reversals, strange fulfilments may lie on the lap of the gods, but we 
have no knowledge of these, and hear neither the high laughter nor the far voices. 
But we front a possible because a spiritual destiny greater than the height of 
imperial fortunes, and have that which may send our voices further than the 
trumpets of east and west. Through ages of slow westering, till now we face the 
sundown seas, we have learned in continual vicissitude that there are secret ways 
whereon armies cannot march. And this has been given to us, a more ardent 
longing, a more rapt passion in the things of outward beauty and in the things of 
spiritual beauty. Nor it seems to me is there any sadness, or only the serene 
sadness of a great day's end, that, to others, we reveal in our best the genius of a 
race whose farewell is in a tragic lighting of torches of beauty around its grave." 

Fiona Maclkod. 

ERNEST RENAN discovered the Celt somewhere 
about the year 1856 ; but in the year 1891 Grant 
Allen made the far more interesting discovery that 
there was such a thing as a Celtic movement in English art. 
In a vivacious article in The Fortnightly Review he made it 
seem as if the Celtic influence dominated the field of artistic 
activity. " The return wave of Celtic influence over Teu- 
tonic or Teutonised England has brought with it many 
strange things, good, bad, and indifferent." He wrote : 

"It has brought with it Home Rule, Land Nationalisa- 
tion, Socialism, Radicalism, the Reverend Hugh Price 
Hughes, the Tithes War, the Crofter Question, the Plan of 
Campaign. It has brought fresh forces into political life — 
the eloquent young Irishman, the perfervid Highland Scot, 
the enthusiastic Welshman, the hard-headed Cornish miner : 
Methodism, Catholicism, the Eisteddfod, the parish priest, 
New Tipperary, the Hebrides, the Scotland Division of 
Liverpool ; Conybeare, Cunninghame Graham, Michael 
Davitt, Holyoake ; Co-operation, the Dockers, The Star, the 
Fabians. Powers hitherto undreamt of surge up in our 
147 



148 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

parliamentary world in the Sextons, the Healys, the Atherley 
Joneses, the McDonalds, the O'Briens, the Dillons, the 
Morgans, the Abrahams ; in our wider public life in the 
William Morrises, the Annie Besants, the Father Humphreys, 
the Archbishop Crokes, the General Booths, the Alfred 
Russel Wallaces, the John Stuart Blackies, the Joseph 
Arches, the Bernard Shaws, the John Burnses ; the People's 
Palace, the Celtic Society of Scotland, the Democratic 
Federation, the Socialist League. Anybody who looks over 
any great list of names in any of the leading modern move- 
ments in England — from the London County Council to the 
Lectures at South Place — will see in a moment that the 
New Radicalism is essentially a Celtic product. The Celt in 
Britain, like Mr Burne Jones's enchanted princess, has lain 
silent for ages in an enforced long sleep ; but the spirit of 
the century, pushing aside the weeds and briars of privilege 
and caste, has set free the sleeper at last. ..." 

Sufficiently matter-of-fact in his assertions, Grant Allen's 
enthusiasm was just a little premature. But he was only a 
year or so too early, and if he had stayed his pen a little while 
he would have been able to announce the real Celtic revival 
of the Nineties which received its first strong impetus from 
the genius of William Butler Yeats. 

The Celtic movement as expressed in the various fields 
t)f activity named by Grant Allen was at the dawn of the 
Eighteen Nineties quite free of self-consciousness. It was not 
really a " movement " at all ; and even where Grant Allen 
correctly indicates Celtic influence, that influence is the ac- 
cidental outcome of the fact that those who were responsible 
for it happened to have been Celts or to have had Celtic blood 
in their veins. In many of his examples it would have been 
of equal pertinence to trace Teutonic or Latin influences. 
The real Celtic revival, as a revival, began with the Irish 
Literary movement. W. B. Yeats published his first book 
of poems in Dublin in 1885 ; but it was not until he issued 
The Wanderings of Oisin, and Other Poems, in 1889, that a 
new voice singing a song as old as time was recognised. 



THE DISCOVERY OF THE CELT 149 

With the publication of The Countess Kathleen, in 1892, and 
the Celtic Twilight, in 1893, this new voice was hailed as 
something more than new ; it was hailed as a strong and 
persuasive voice that was already attracting to itself 
affinities in the land of its origin. Among these were Dr 
Douglas Hyde, Lady Gregory, George Russell (A.E,), Lionel 
Johnson, John Eglinton and, later, and with less certainty 
from the Celtic standpoint, George Moore. Dr Douglas 
Hyde and Lady Gregory were devoting their attention to 
the ancient legends and songs of Ireland, and their studies 
ultimatel}^ resulted in the publication of books such as the 
Love Songs of Connacht and Gods and Fighting Men. George 
Russell and W. B. Yeats linked up the natural mysticism of 
the Celt with Theosophy, besides contributing to the move- 
ment poems of rare beauty. John Eglinton worked along 
lines of philosophic interpretation which he expressed in Two 
Essays 07i the Remnant, published in 1895. George Moore 
introduced an equally Celtic sense of fact into a movement 
which might otherwise have been a record of dreams. 

In 1891 W. B. Yeats founded the National Literary Society, 
which, seven years later, brought into existence the Irish 
Literary Theatre at Dublin. The object of the Irish Literary 
Theatre was first and foremost to create a medium for the 
production of " something better than the ordinary play of 
commerce," and by so doing to augment the chances of a 
native Irish dramatic renaissance. The first performances of 
the society took place in 1899, when two plays, The Countess 
Kathleen, by W. B. Yeats, and The Heather Field, by Edward 
Martyn, were produced at the Antient Concert Rooms, 
Dublin. Next year the Irish Literary Theatre produced five 
plays at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin. These were : The 
Bending of the Bough, by George Moore ; The Last Feast of 
the Fraima, by Alice Milligan ; Mceve, by Edward Martyn. 
In 1901 at the same theatre were produced Diarmuid and 
Grania, by W. B. Yeats and George Moore ; and a Gaelic 
play. The Twisting of the Rope, by Douglas Hyde. These 
performances closed the first attempt in Ireland to create 3 
national drama. During its brief life, the Irish Literary 



150 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

Theatre recorded its views and achievements in an occasional 
publication called Beltaine (1899-1900), which was the fore- 
runner of Samhain, as the Irish Literary Theatre was of the 
National Theatre Society Ltd., and its famous playhouse in 
Abbey Street, Dublin. The dramatic and literary awaken- 
ing in Ireland found expression in the local Press, The Daily 
Express of Dublin devoting considerable space to the dis- 
cussion of literature and art, to which most of the young 
Irish writers contributed. 

Side by side with the development of the Celtic revival 
in Ireland there were Celtic awakenings of a lesser degree in 
Scotland and Wales. The chief activity of the Scottish re- 
vival was at Edinburgh, where Patrick Geddes produced four 
numbers of a quarterly review called the Evergreen in 1895 
and 1896. The idea seemed to be to make each number 
complete in itself and so to arrange the contents that they 
should serve as comments on art and life apropos the four 
seasons. Among the literary contributors are found the 
names of Patrick Geddes, Sir Noel Paton, S. R. Crockett, 
William Sharp, "Fiona Macleod," Sir George Douglas, 
Riccardo Stephens and Gabriel Setoun. The French com- 
munist, Elisee Reclus, was also a contributor. All the 
decorations were in black and white, and the artists included 
Pittendrigh Macgillivray, John Duncan, E. A. Hornel and 
James Cadenhead. 

The most important literary product of the Celtic revival 
in Scotland was the work of the mysterious personality 
"Fiona Macleod," whom we now know to have been the 
novelist and critic, William Sharp. " Fiona Macleod 's " 
first volume, Pharais ; a Romance of the Isles, was published 
by Moray, of Derby, in 1894 ; other works from the same 
pen, such as The Washer of the Ford, were published by 
Patrick Geddes and Colleagues, at Edinburgh. The work of 
"Fiona Macleod " possessed all the more pronounced char- 
acteristics of Celtic art, with an insistence upon mystical 
aloofness so deliberate as to suggest a determination to be 
Celtic at all costs ; a pose carried off successfully only by 
rare literary skill. 



THE DISCOVERY OF THE CELT 151 

The movement in Wales was far less definite. There was 
a decided quickening of social consciousness among the Celts, 
which expressed itself in ardent political activities of a 
Radical tendency. The extreme section was represented by 
the Labour leader, "Mabon," but the main current of the 
national political genius found its fullest expression in the 
vigorous personality of a rising young politician, Lloyd George, 
who was later to become the chief protagonist of Joseph 
Chamberlain during the Jingo outbreak of the final years 
of the decade. Literary activity was confined to a renewed 
interest in national myth and tradition, an interest aroused by 
the magnificent collection of legends made by Lady Charlotte 
Guest in The Mabinogian. But there was no distinctive 
modern art or literary production. The Welsh poetic 
renaissance, save for such hints as are to be found in the 
poems of Ernest Rhys, was unborn, and Wales was still 
under the impression that all things associated with the 
theatre were evil ; a view that was not to be altered until 
well into the present century. 

These various expressions of the Celtic renaissance, rather 
than those indicated by Grant Allen, were in the true tradi- 
tion of that Celtic spirit first interpreted by Ernest Renan in 
The Poetry of the Celtic Races. Speaking of that race he says : 

" Its history is itself one long lament ; it still recalls its 
exiles, its flights across the seas. If at times it seems to be 
cheerful, a tear is not slow to glisten behind its smile ; it 
does not know that strange forgetfulness of human condi- 
tions and destinies which is called gaiety. Its songs of joy 
end as elegies ; there is nothing to equal the delicious sadness 
of its national melodies. One might call them emanations 
from on high which, falling drop by drop upon the soul, pass 
through it like memories of another world. Never have men 
feasted so long upon these solitary delights of the spirit, these 
poetic memories which simultaneously intercross all the 
sensation of life, so vague, so deep, so penetrative, that one 
might die from them, without being able to say whether it 
was from bitterness or sweetness. . . . The essential element 



152 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

of the Celt's poetic life is the adventure— that is to say, the 
pursuit of the unknown, an endless quest after an object ever 
flying from desire. It was of this that St Brandam dreamed, 
that Peredur sought with his mystic chivalry, that Knight 
Owen asked of his subterranean journeyings. This race 
desires the infinite, it thirsts for it, and pursues it at all costs, 
beyond the tomb, beyond hell itself. " 

The most profound and the most effective interpreter of 
that view of life in modern British literature is W. B. Yeats. 
It was he who was the chief figure of the Celtic Renaissance 
of the Eighteen Nineties ; the artists, writers and politicians 
named by Grant Allen were Celts playing the Teutonic game, 
and winning. In Yeats we have the fullest expression of the 
intellectual Celt — poet, mystic and patriot — expressing him- 
self in an imaginative propaganda which has affected the 
thoughts and won the appreciation of the English-speaking 
world. 

He was born in Dublin in the year 1866, the son of the 
Irish painter J. B. Yeats, R.H.A. Educated chiefly in the 
city of his birth, he was probably helped in the ripening of 
his genius by frequent visits to relatives in County Sligo, 
where, among a peasantry intimate with ghosts, fairies and 
demons, he laid the foundations of a wide knowledge of the 
more remote characteristics and traditions of his country- 
men. Ireland was his home until 1887. Later, the Yeats 
family went to London, and during the Nineties he lived 
partly in the English capital and partly in the Irish. His 
aim in promoting the Irish Literary movement was the out- 
come of the idea that for Ireland " a national drama or 
literature must spring from a native interest in life and its 
problems, and a strong capacity for life among the people." 
So by studying and translating the Gaelic legends, rescuing 
and recording in literary form the folk-tales of the country- 
side, and inspiring Irish writers and artists to interpret the 
national individuality rather than that of alien lands, he 
hoped to crystallise the scattered forces of Gaelic energy, and 
thus make a literature that would stand towards Ireland as 



THE DISCOVERY OF THE CELT 153 

the literature of the Shakespearean period stands towards 
England. To make, in short, the literature and art of Ireland 
both national and quick with a life that might be felt not 
merely by a select coterie of cultured enthusiasts, but by the 
whole nation. 

Working for this idea, Yeats gathered around him, as we 
have seen, all that was most hopeful in modern Irish letters. 
The result to-day is that Ireland is no longei a geographical 
expression with a clamorous voice ; Ireland to-day stands 
among the nations as a race with a literature and drama 
expressing its inmost spiritual, intellectual and social needs. 
In all save the fact that this literature and drama uses a 
language which Ireland, with the rest of the British Empire 
and America, owes to the Anglo-Saxon, it is essentially Irish 
in aim and expression. And, incidentally, it has gone a long 
way towards exploding the idea that the genius of Ireland 
found complete expression in the Irish Melodies of Tom 
Moore and the melodramatic heroes of Dion Boucicault. 
"Our legends," says W. B. Yeats, "are always associated 
with places, and not merely every mountain and valley, but 
every strange stone and little coppice has its legend, pre- 
served in written or unwritten tradition. Our Irish romantic 
movement has arisen out of this tradition, and should always, 
even when it makes new legends about traditional people 
and things, be haunted by people and places. It should 
make Ireland, as Ireland and all other lands were in ancient 
times, a holy land to her own people." 

Yeats, with Maeterlinck, and other foreign symbolists, 
filled his song and drama with the possibility of unexpected 
happenings. These works are steeped in a different atmos- 
phere from that in which we ordinarily move. They dare to 
be unreasonable; to go where Caolte "tosses his burning 
hair," and Niam calls : 

*• Away, come away ; 
And brood no more where the fire is bright ; 

Filling thy heart with a mortal dream ; 

For breasts are heaving and eyes a-gleam ; 
Away, come away, to the dim twilight." 



154 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

In such imaginative abandon there is possibility of dis- 
covery and adventure. America was not discovered by 
Columbus sailing into uncharted seas, but by the imaginative 
impulse that foretold continents over the rim of the known 
world. So it is that the Celtic dreaming, made articulate by 
Yeats and others, contains in its suggestive darknesses more 
wisdom than subservience to known things and known ex- 
periences have contributed to men. The Celts have reahsed, 
by intuition rather than by reason, what all people of simple 
imagination have realised, that life, as Renan says of the 
Breton, is not a personal adventure undertaken by each man 
on his own account, but a link in a long chain, a gift received 
and handed on. In addition to this idea of tradition, the 
British Celt has realised and reasserted the further idea of 
experience by individual adventure. W. B. Yeats is dis- 
tinguished among Celtic writers because of this sense of 
individuality. His work is not merely pensive and wonder- 
stricken in the manner of much traditional Celtic art ; it is 
thoughtful and joyful, possessing a strength born of personal 
happiness and individual wonder. In the retelling of the 
tales of his nation he has added much of himself to that 
which " it has taken generations to invent," and he has come 
nearer towards stimulating the creation of a noble popular 
literature than anyone in Ireland since the sunple tales 
and legends of Finn and Oisin were the commonplaces of 
the national mind. 

There was a wizardry about his songs quite new to con- 
temporary Ireland. His choice of words was full of a vague 
glimmering of unknown things, while his rhythm haunted 
the mind with the peculiar insistence of songs which have 
stood age-long tests of familiarity. But the matter was 
strange to customary hearing, it was redolent of 

" The dim wisdoms old and deep 
That God gives unto men in sleep." 

Celtic dependence upon the intimation of the inner con- 
sciousness, however, did not draw him away from familiar 
things and more obvious but none the less profound sensa- 



THE DISCOVERY OF THE CELT 155 

tions. He was engaged quite as often with the simpler con- 
cerns of sentiment, with the home and the affections of the 
more human among human beings, with " the cry of a child 
by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, the heavy 
steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould." 

His tales, like his verses, are coloured by myth and folk- 
lore, mysticism and magic. All the stories in The Secret 
Rose and The Celtic TwUight hinge their interest upon some- 
thing outside mundane experiences. Many are little more 
than simple records of tales he has been told by the country 
folk in the more remote districts of Ireland. " I have wi'itten 
down accurately and candidly," he says, in the preface to 
The Celtic Twilight, " as much as I have heard and seen and, 
except by way of commentary, nothing that I have merely 
imagined. I have been at no pains to separate my own be- 
liefs from those of the peasantry, but have rather let my men 
and women, ghouls and faeries, go their way unoffended or 
defended by any argument of mine. The things a man has 
heard and seen are threads of life, and if he pulled them care- 
fully from the confused distaff of memory, any who will can 
weave them into whatever garment of belief please them 
best." The garment of belief which the poet has woven 
about these old tales is one of the most successful expressions 
of the literary renaissance of the Nineties. 

Anglo-Saxons are not usually interested in a peasant's 
vague experiences in the twilight margin of the West, but 
they are concerned as to the nature of such experiences. 
They appreciate the unreal in the dullest ghost story. They 
recognise the thrill in the shallowest yarn of the ghost-seer, 
even though the cause be no more mysterious than the desire 
of a domestic animal for human society, or some white- 
smocked and bibulous peasant mistaking the churchyard 
for the kmg's highway. But to hear of the doings of Celtic 
peasants in the language of W. B. Yeats is to hear something 
that interests beyond the limits of a mere tale. Some of his 
stories deal frankly with the mysterious as it appeals to the 
devotee of magic, and some of them have an imaginative 
atmosphere recalling Edgar Allan Poe. Such are the stories 



156 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

of Michael Robartes in The Secret Rose and The Tables of the 
Law. In the plays, also, similar themes recur, expressed in 
the drama's convention of conflict between experience and 
idea. Here Yeats is more akin to Maeterlinck, although 
there is always that national note which is nowhere apparent 
in the work of the Belgian symbolist. Pelleas and Melisande 
belongs to no country and all countries, but The Countess 
Kathleen belongs first to Ireland — and then to humanity. 



CHAPTER XI 



THE MINOR POET 



THE term "minor poet " is inexact at best, but dur 
ing the Eighteen Nineties it was used very widely, 
and a httle unnecessarily, to distinguish the younger 
generation of poets from the generation still represented by 
Tennyson, Swinburne, William Morris, George Meredith, 
and from among whom Robert Browning and Dante Gabriel 
Rossetti were but lately removed. The distinction, like the 
term "decadent," began as a disparagement and, despite 
well-meaning protests, it lived on with a difference. Richard 
Le GalHenne lectured on "The Minor Poet," proving him 
of importance ; and many critics were of the same mind, 
including William Archer. In the preface to Poets of the 
Younger Generation, a book written in 1899, but not published 
until 1902, owing to the outbreak of the Boer War, he said : 
"Criticism has made great play with the supercilious catch- 
word ' minor poet. ' No one denies, of course, that there are 
greater and lesser lights in the firmament of song ; but I do 
most strenuously deny that the lesser lights, if they be stars 
at all and not mere factitious fireworks, deserve to be 
spoken of with contempt. Now a shade of contempt has 
certainly attached of late years to the term 'minor poet,' 
which has given it a depressing and sterilising effect." 

Zeal to stigmatise a calumny has here led to over-statement 
of its effect. The very book in which the above words 
appear, with its excellent review of the work of thirty-three 
poets, disproves at least any suggestion of sterilising results ; 
and, though the survey is both comprehensive and catholic, 
one might add without much fear of cavil the names of 
another twelve poets or more to William Archer's hierarchy. 
The truth of the matter is that the poets so labelled were 

157 



158 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

indifferent to the term ; but less discerning members of the 
reading public may have suffered by allowing it to prejudice 
them against new poetry which was certainly in the tradition 
of the great British bards. Indeed, it is not easy to discover 
another decade in which English literature possessed so 
numerous and so meritorious a body of young poets. There 
were splendid outbursts of song in the Elizabethan and 
Caroline epochs, and another in the early years of the nine- 
teenth century, when such poetic planets as Wordsworth, 
Byron, Coleridge, Keats and Shelley swam into human ken, 
but I know of no other decade with such a variety and ebulli- 
ence of song as that under review. How much of it will sur- 
vive the test of the passing years no critical judgment can 
say ; nor is that our concern. The future will have its own 
tastes and its own criteria. It is our business to recognise 
that, according to existing standards and modern predilec- 
tions, the Nineties were prodigal of poets and distinguished 
in poems. 

Already several of the so-called minor poets of the time 
have won something like the indisputableness of classics. 
Every survey of recent poetry takes willing and serious 
account of Francis Thompson, Ernest Dowson, Lionel John- 
son and John Davidson ; and for greater reasons than that 
these poets are no longer living. Unhesitating also is the 
recognition of William Watson, Alice Meynell, A. E. Hous- 
man, Henry Newbolt and W. B. Yeats. There may be some 
who would still withhold the bays from Rudyard Kipling, 
as there are others who deal niggardly justice to Stephen 
Phillips, whose poetic achievement is higher than the valua- 
tion of the moment, if lower than that of the time when he 
gave us Christ in Hades, Marpessa, and Paolo and Francesca : 
poems surely destined to outlive detraction and neglect. 

But the natural acceptance of such poets only touches the 
fringe of the fin de siecle fabric of song. The second decade 
of the new century sustains a lively interest in many poets 
who might well have been considered local to the last de- 
cade of the old. Some of them, though lacking nothing in 
individuality, sing with an accent so much in tune with the 



THE MINOR POET 159 

*' divine average " of culture and experience that some sort 
of permanence is assured to their work in special fanes of 
poesy, if not in the broader avenues of popular acceptance. 
Among such poets may be named Laurence Binyon, H. C. 
Beeching, F. B. Money-Coutts, E. Nesbit, Laurence Hous- 
man, Herbert Trench, Margaret L. Woods, " Michael Field," 
Sturge Moore, Charles Dalmon, Selwyn Image, DolHe Rad- 
ford, Ernest Radford, Norman Gale, George Santayana and 
Rosamund Marriott-Watson. And finally there remain 
those poets who give expression to moods more attuned to 
end-of-the-century emotions, but who will command a select 
group of admirers in most periods. In this class are Arthur 
Symons, Richard Le Gallienne, John Gray, Lord Alfred 
Douglas, Theodore Wratislaw and Olive Custance. 

In spite, however, of what has been said, the term "minor " 
applied to poetry came to be something more than a formal 
expression of contempt. The contempt it expressed was as- 
sociated with the prevailing, though half- amused, antagonism 
of the middle classes towards the decadent movement in art 
and life. CaUing the new poetry " minor " was, from the 
point of view of literary criticism, hitting below the belt, for 
the term really conveyed a moral meaning beneath a literary 
demonstration of force. Opposition to the younger poets 
may at times have taken the form of genuine literary 
criticism, but the voice of disapproval at its loudest lay in 
ethics rather than letters. Owen Seaman made exquisite 
fun of the younger generation of poets, particularly of 

" A precious few, the heirs of utter godlihead, 
Who wear the yellow flower of blameless bodlihead 1 " 

in The Battle of the Bays, and in a satirical poem, " To a Boy- 
Poet of the Decadence," he indicates precisely the type of 
poet who came to be regarded as minor, and the sort of 
objection he aroused : 

" The erotic affairs that you fiddle aloud 
Are as vulgar as coin of the mint ; 
And you merely distinguish yourself from the crowd 
By the fact that you put 'em in print. 



ICO THE EIGin^EKN NINETIES 

For your dull little vices we don't care a lig. 

It is (his that \vc deeply deplore : 
You were cast for a common or usual pig, 

But you play tlie invincible bore." 

Hero tliere are direct inferences of erotic tendencies in the 
younger poets, as though such things were so unusual in 
youthful verse as to be startling, instead of being recognised 
as characteristics of all adolescent poetry. Be that as it 
may, " erotic affairs " may or may not be vulgar or dull. In 
the hands of a Baudelaire or a Gautier, a Swinburne or a 
Rossetti, they may offend — but not necessai-ily by Nulpirity 
or dullness. Neither were the best of the minor pt>ets vulj^ar 
or dull. Their eroticism may have been irritating, disturb- 
ing, offensive or disgusting, but it was often muqiu\ and 
always sullieiently juNenescent and impudent to be bright. 
lint the younger poets did not ;ill eiT on the side of eroticism, 
and some of those who had other enthusiasms were ready 
enough to criticise and repudiate their fellows in song. 
Biehard I.e (lallienne. Mho, himself, was usually, and un- 
justly, classed with the degenerates, showed small sympathy 
with that type in 'The Dtvadent to his Soul." In the 
eom-se of this poem he deiines \'ery clearly the attitude 
adopted by at least one poet of the time towai'ds what was 
conventionally decadent : 

" Then from that day, he used his soul 
As bitters to the over dulcet sins, 
As olives to the fatness of the feast — 
She made those dear heart-breaking ecstasies 
Of minor chords amid the Phrygian tlutes. 
She sauced his sins with splendid memories, 
Stany regrets and infinite hopes and fears ; 
His holy youth and his first love 
Made pearly background to strange-coloured vice.'- 

And Lionel Johnson, who was neither decadent nor minor, 
contributed a prose satire on the same subjivt to the first 
number of The Pogcanf. It is calletl " Incurable," and deals 
rather heavily with that phase of youthful introspection 
which tends to brood on love and suicide. But his decadent 



THE MINOR POET 161 

poet is better represented by examples of the work attributed 
to him. Here is a faithful imitation of the minor mode with 
satire so well eonccaled that, in the Nineties, it might easily 
have passed for the real tiling : 

" Sometimes, in very joy of shame. 
Our flesh becomes one Uving flame : 
And she and I 
Are no more separate, but the same. 

Ardour and agony unite ; 

Desire, dehrium, deUght : 

And I and she 

Faint in the fierce and fevered nigtit. 

Her body music is : and all ! 
The accords of lute and viola, 
When she and I 
Play on live limbs love's opera.'-' 

There were poets, I say, who might well have been repre- 
sented by the above paiody. Arthur Symons (in his earlier 
phase too often a llestoration poet malgre lui) played the 
part of minor poet of the minute with sometfiing like 
desperation : 

" Her cheeks are hot, her cheeks are white ; 

The white girl hardly breathes to-night. 
So faint the pulses come and go. 
That waken to a smouldering glow 

The morbid faintness of her white. 

What drowsing heats of sense, desire 
Longing and languorous, the fire 

Of what white ashes, subtly mesh 

The fascinations of her flesh 
Into a breathing web of fire ? 

Only her eyes, only her mouth, 
Live, in the agony of drouth, 

Athirst for that which may not be : 

The desert of virginity 
Aches in the hotness of her mouth. '•-' 

And among all his earlier poems you can find innumerable 
manifestations of the deeadent reversion to artifieiality, as 
in the hnes : 



162 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

■'- Divinely rosy rogued, your face 

Smiles, with its painted little mouth. 
Half tearfully, a quaint grimace ; 

The charm and pathos of your youth 
Mock the mock roses of your face.'-'- 

Such variations upon love were by no means new to poetry 
even in this country. Swinburne and Rossetti had been 
roundly trounced by Robert Buchanan for venturing as far 
but no farther, and the minor poets of the Nineties suffered 
similar attacks from their own outraged contemporaries. 
Generally speaking, this erotic verse lacked the magic of fine 
poetry, and to that extent it was minor or, rather, not poetry 
at all. It was verse, and often, let it be admitted, very good 
verse, but only in the work of Ernest Dowson did it possess 
the high- wrought intensity and indefinable glamour of poetry. 

The veritable minor note of the poetry of these years was 
not, strangely enough, that sought out for denunciation and 
satire by the bourgeoisie. The eroticism which became so 
prevalent in the verse of the younger poets was minor because 
it was little more than a pose ; not because it was erotic. It 
was minor because it was the swan song of the Fleshly School 
of the Seventies and Eighties. It did not ring true : for one 
reason because it was an affectation, and for another because 
it was perhaps a little too much like the life the decadents 
were trying to live. Only a respectable person, like Swin- 
burne, could write a really profound decadent love poem. 

Where the minor poets were both minor and poets was in 
that curious lisping note which many of them managed to 
introduce into tliek poems. This was a new note in poetry, 
corresponding with the minor key in music. It was not polish 
or style, nor metrical, nor alliterative trick or experiment. 
Neither was it entirely that fashionable sensitiveness, 
which, in its ultimate search for unknown, unexperienced 
reality, often resulted in a sterile perversity. It approxi- 
mated more to that ultra-refinement of feeling, that 
fastidiousness of thought which, in its over-nice concern for 
fine shades and precious meanings, becomes bleak and cheap. 
There was an unusual femininity about it ; not the femininity 



THE MINOR POET 163 

of women, nor yet the feminine primness of men ; it was more 
a mingling of what is effeminate in both sexes. This was the 
genuine minor note, and it was abnormal — a form of herma- 
phroditism. But it has left no single poem as a monument 
to itself. It was never so near corporeality as that. It was 
a passing mood which gave the poetry of the hour a hothouse 
fragrance ; a perfume faint yet unmistakable and strange. 
And now, as then, it lives only in stray " gillyflowers of 
speech," recording, perchance, "a bruised daffodil of last 
night's sin," to borrow phrases from the early poems of 
Richard Le Gallienne, who affected these mincing measures 
as thoroughly as he has since followed a more virile muse. 

Again, when the minor poet was most minor, he always 
contrived to clothe his verse in gracious language which had 
full power to charm by its ingenuity and beauty. If the minor 
mode forbade its devotees to trespass far beyond the borders 
of fancy ; if it prevented prettiness becoming beauty, we 
need not complain. Fancy and Prettiness never sought to 
dethrone Imagination and Beauty, but to support and serve 
them like good courtiers, and so the minor poets of the 
Nineties served Art and Life. 

Yet so myopic was the literary vision that ephemeral 
verses were classed as minor with the strong and normal 
lyricism of William Watson's : 

" Let me go forth, and share 

The overflowing Sun 
With one wise friend, or one 
Better than wise, being fair. 
Where the peewit wheels and dips 

On heights of bracken and ling. 
And Earth, unto her finger tips, 

Tingles with the Spring. '■- 

Or with the wistful beauty of W. B. Yeats' 

•" When you are old and grey and full of sleep 
And nodding by the fire, take down this book. 
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look 
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep ; 



164 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

How many loved your moments of glad grace, 
And loved your beauty with love false and true ; 
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you. 

And loved the sorrows of your changing face. 

And bending down beside the glowing bars. 
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled 
And paced upon the mountains overhead. 

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.'' 

Or Richard Le iiallienne's beautiful lines : 

" She's somewhere in the sunlight strong, 
Her tears are in the falling rain. 
She calls me in the wind's soft song. 
And with the flowers she comes again.'-' 

Or with some such happy song as Norman Gale's 

" All the lanes are lyric 
All the bushes sing. 
You are at your kissing. 
Spring ! '•'- 

Or the more tragic theme of Francis Money-Coutts : 

" Oft in the lapses of the night, 

When dead things live and live things die, 
I touch you with a \\dld affright 

Lest you have ceased in sleep to sigh.'' 

And later even with Stephen Phillips' Christ in Hades : 

" It is the time of tender, opening things. 
Above my head the fields murmur and wave. 
And breezes are just moving the clear heat. 
O the mid-noon is trembling on the corn. 
On cattle calm, and trees in perfect sleep. 
And hast thou empty come ? Hast thou not brought 
Even a blossom with the noise of rain 
And smell of earth about it, that we all 
Might gather round and whisper over it ? 
At one wet blossom all the dead would feel ! *' 

And the higher and deeper simplicity of A. E. Housman 







V 



A. E. HOUSMAN 

From n Jlravhii' I'V Williaiti Kothensteiii 



THE MINOR POET 165 

'■■ With rue my heart is laden 
For golden friends I had. 
For many a rose-lipt maiden 
And many a lightfoot lad. 

By brooks too broad for leaping 

The lightfoot boys are laid ; 
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping 

In fields where roses fade.'' 

All these were classed as lesser poems — and so they are, 
beside the best of Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley, Keats and 
the best work of those few other high lords of song ; but with 
the rest they may claim kin, and ever remain in goodly 
company. 



CHAPTER XII 



FRANCIS THOMPSON 



THE wave of Catholicism wliich swept over the art 
world of the closing years of the nineteenth century 
reached its poetic fulness in the work of Francis 
Thompson. Contemporary \vith him were Ernest Dowson, 
Lionel Johnson and John Graj^, and, although each was in- 
spired by the same spiritual forces to reassert in song their 
faith in traditional Christianity, none of them had his bigness 
of vision. Few poets, indeed, of any time, have surpassed 
his technical skill or the prodigality of his literary inventive- 
ness ; but, beyond that, the spirit of the hour breathed into 
his verse a new avowal of naysticism, and it informed his 
orthodoxy with so sweet and beautiful a sense of life that 
those who were old in the convention of Rome must have 
marvelled at the beauty of their inheritance. 

Francis Thompson, product as he is of the poetic impulsion 
of the Nineties, cannot be located there, as one can locate so 
many of the poets of the time. He is not estranged from 
neighbouring decades, like Ernest Dowson and John Gray, 
by a fortuitous decadence of mood, but rather does he par- 
take of the endless current of the years and of the eternal 
normalities. Those who care to discover obvious resem- 
blances among poets have compared him, fittingly enough, 
with Crashaw, Vaughan and Herbert, and other seventeenth- 
century mystical singers, and sometimes as though he had 
been influenced by them. Yet it is known that he resembled 
such poets before he had made himself acquainted with their 
works. Francis Thompson is, of course, just one more mani- 
festation of the eternal mystery of faith, and in his greatness 
he is of no time and all time. Those resemblances with the 
past have no more to do with the average magnificence of his 

i66 




Francis Thompson (Lifk Mask, 1905) 

From the Photograph hy Sherril Schfl! 



FRANCIS THOMPSON 167 

genius and his work than the minor novelties of thought and 
expression which may remind us of his corporeal moment. 
To the latter I must refer, and with more excuse than that 
demanded by the scope of this book, for there is much in 
his life and art which links him with, without confining him 
to, his period. 

The son of a doctor, Francis Thompson was born at Preston 
on 18th December 1859. His father and mother, and two 
paternal uncles, were converts to the Roman Catholic 
religion ; both uncles were associated with letters, one as 
professor of English literature at the Catholic University, 
Dublin, and later as sub-editor of The Dublin Review, and 
author of several devotional tracts, and the other as the 
author of a volume of poems. Francis was educated in the 
Catholic faith, and sent to Ushaw College with some idea 
of ultimate priesthood ; but that intention must have been 
abandoned, for at the age of seventeen he was a reluctant 
student of medicine at Owens College, Manchester. Six 
years were devoted to this work when, repeated attempts 
to take a degree proving abortive, a medical career was 
abandoned. He expressed no desire to live by writing, 
although he was an ardent student of literature, with a 
particular affection for ^Eschylus, William Blake and De 
Quincey. Several unsuccessful attempts were made by him 
to earn a living in various employments, but in 1885, stung 
by his father's reproaches, Thompson left Preston and walked 
to London. For three years he lived unknown, generally 
in degrees of poverty and destitution. He was employed 
variously and at odd times ; once as a bootmaker's assistant 
in Leicester Square, again as a publisher's "collector." In 
1888 he sent two poems, "The Passion of Mary" and 
"Dream Tryst," and a prose essay, "Paganism Old and 
New," copied out on ragged scraps of paper, to Merry 
England. This act proved a turning-point in his career, for 
the editor, Wilfrid Meynell, recognising the extraordinary 
quality of the work submitted to him, not only published 
it, but sought out the author, who had given the vague ad- 
dress of Charing Cross Post Office ; and, having found him, 



168 THE EIGHTEF.N NINETIES 

became his lifelong friend and, in course of time, liis literary 
executor and the far-seeing guardian of his fame. 

So poor was Francis Thompson during his early London 
days that even writing materials were beyond his means, 
and some old half-used account-books, given to him by the 
Leicester Square bootmaker, were a windfall, enabling him 
to translate to more enduring form something of the richness 
of his mind. But he was not a writer in the ordinary sense. 
His desire to harvest his dreams was intermittent at best, 
and, in after years, friendly editors were at great pains to 
extract commissioned work from him. At the same time 
he did make some attempt at publicity, as the sending of 
manuscripts to Mr Wilfrid Meynell would prove. The results 
were not, however, always so fortunate, for in the following 
year his essay on " Shelley " was rejected by The Dublin 
Review. Nearly twenty years later the essay was discovered 
among the poet's papers by his literary executor, and, as we 
know. The Dublin Review was enabled to make amends. 
During his own life Thompson published three volumes ; 
Poems (1893), Sister Songs (1895) and New Poems (1897). 
He contributed poems and reviews to several publications, 
notably to The Academy, under the editorship of Lewis Hind, 
who was one of the earliest to give practical recognition to 
his genius. 

It was not easy to befriend such a man as Francis Thomp- 
son. For years lie had taken opium, which set up a paralysis 
of the social will and made him tragically indifferent to the 
most elementary amenities of life. His friends induced him, 
especially when he was too ill to resist their kind offices, to 
leave the estranged city ways, and thus there are oases in his 
sordid outer life — in hospitals ; at the house of Wilfrid and 
Alice Meynell ; at Storrington, in Sussex, where he wrote 
most of the poems in his first volume ; and, later, near the 
Franciscan monastery at Pantasaph, North Wales, where he 
\\Tote the greater part of those in his last. After this he did 
little work of first qualit}^ His own soul, rather than the 
world, made fateful and fatal demands of him. This strange 
being, with brain of wondrous imagery and cleanest thoughts. 



FRANCIS THOMPSON 169 

this gentle poetic genius, voluntarily, it would seem, chose 
destitution and desolation as his lot — if one dare apply such 
terms to a being whose inner life was so rich with vision. 
But opium and privation are exacting mistresses and eventu- 
ally they wrecked his never-too-robust body. Unfamiliar 
and unkempt, this wayward child of the magical soul, this 
decadent Shelley who "dabbled his fingers in the day-fall," 
preferred to haunt the Embankment, the cavernous arches 
of Charing Cross and the bleak and dusty colonnades of 
Covent Garden, like any lonely and friendless human oiit- 
cast, until disease drove him to take shelter in a hospital at 
St John's Wood, where he died, on 13th November 1907. 

Among the many eloquent and whole-hearted tributes to 
his memory, that by Wilfred Whitten stands out for its vivid 
word portraiture of the man in his latter days. Mr Whitten 
first met Francis Thompson at the office of The Academy, 
Chancery Lane, in 1897, 'the year in which, with his New 
Poems, he took farewell of poetry and began," he says, " to 
look on life as so much dead lift, so much needless postscript 
to his finished epistle. Thompson came frequently to the 
office to receive books for review, and to bring in his 
' copy. ' Every visit meant a talk, which was never curtailed 
by Thompson. This singer, who had soared to themes too 
dazzling for all but the rarest minds ; this poet of the broken 
wing and the renounced lyre had not become moody or taci- 
turn. At his best he was a fluent talker, who talked straight 
from his knowledge and convictions, yet never for victory. 
He weighed his words, and would not hurt a controversial 
fly. On great subjects he was slow or silent ; on trifles he 
became grotesquely tedious. This dreamer seemed to be 
surprised into a kind of exhilaration at finding himself in 
contact with small realities. And then the fountains of 
memory would be broken up, or some quaint corner of his 
amour propre would be touched. He would explain nine 
times what was clear, and talk about snuff or indigestion or 
the posting of a letter until the room swam round us." 

Following this comes a picture of the poet as he appeared 
in his pilgrimage through tlie London streets : "A stranger 



170 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

figure than Thompson's was not to be seen in London. 
Gentle in looks, half-wild in externals, his face worn by pain 
and the fierce reactions of laudanum, his hair and straggling 
beard neglected, he had yet a distinction and an aloofness of 
bearing that marked him in the crowd ; and when he opened 
his lips he spoke as a gentleman and a scholar. A cleaner 
mind, a more naively courteous manner, were not to be found. 
It was impossible and unnecessary to think always of the 
tragic side of his life. He still had to live and work, in his 
fashion, and his entries and exits became our most cheerful 
institution. His great brown cape, which he would wear on 
the hottest days, his disastrous hat, and his dozen neglects 
and makeshifts were only the insignia of our ' Francis ' and 
of the ripest literary talent on the paper. No money (and 
in his later years Thompson suffered more from the possession 
of money than from the lack of it) could keep him in a decent 
suit of clothes for long. Yet he was never ' seedy. ' From 
a newness too dazzling to last, and seldom achieved at that, 
he passed at once into a picturesque nondescript garb that 
was all his own and made him resemble some weird pedlar or 
packman in an etching by Ostade. This impression of him 
was helped by the strange object — his fish-basket, we called 
it — which he wore slung round his shoulders by a strap. It 
had occurred to him that such a basket would be a con- 
venient receptacle for the books which he took away for 
review, and he added this touch to an outward appearance 
which already detached him from millions." 

Stranger or more inspired being has never before slipped 
through the indifferent metropolitan throng, transmuting, 
by his indifference to earthly things, tragic moments into 
joyous conquests. 

Having mentioned the difficulties of friendly intention to- 
wards such a man, it is necessary to quote here a more recent 
tribute to Thompson's earliest friend, Wilfrid Meynell, con- 
tributed in a letter to The Nation by Lewis Hind, in reply to 
a poem "To Francis Thompson," by William H. Davies. 
There were lines in this poem, such as " No window kept a 
light for thee," and " No pilot thought thee worth his pains," 



FRANCIS THOMPSON 171 

which might have led the ill-informed to imagine Thompson 
a friendless and neglected genius. The contrary is made 
quite clear for all time : 

"Now [says Lewis Hind] it is a matter of history that 
there was a man who, through sheer love of great verse, and 
tlirough kindness, piloted Francis Thompson all the years of 
his London life from the late eighties until his death. That 
man was Wilfrid Meynell. There was a window always 
alight for the poet — the window of the Meynell home. And 
if this is not made very clear in the forthcoming Life of 
Francis Thompson, by Everard Meynell, the reason will be 
the family shrinking from making their good deeds kno's\Ti. 
I speak from knowledge. Long ago (it must have been about 
1889), on the occasion of my first meeting with Wilfrid 
Meynell (my initial call at that hospitable house, drawn 
thither by an essay from Mrs Meynell's pen that made me 
eager to meet the author), Mr Meynell asked me if I had ever 
heard of a Francis Thompson who had submitted to him for 
Merry England an astonishing poem from the vague address 
of Charing Cross Post Office. Later, he tracked the poet, 
and from that day until Thompson's death Wilfrid Meynell 
was pilot, friend, purse, anything, everything, to the poet. 
From the material world Francis Thompson wanted nothing. 
It did not interest him. It did not exist for him. His body, 
that wretched structure ordained to house, as it best might, 
his ardent spirit, he, shall I say, despised. Comfort, a home, 
provision for the future were to him unrealities. His only 
realities were spiritual ; his only adventures were in the land 
of visions. The Meynell household was his true parental 
home, and he, a child in all worldly matters, was as incurious 
as a child as to the whence and why of the necessaries of life. 
For a time I was happily instrumental in relieving my friend, 
Wilfrid Meynell, of the financial burden of piloting a poet. 
That was during the days of my editorship of The Academy, 
when for three or four years Thompson was our most valued 
and most difficult contributor. I soon realised the folly of 
sending him a cheque in payment of contributions. Either 



172 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

he would never open the letter, or, likely enough, he would 
light his obstreperous pipe with the cheque, apparentl}^ never 
dreaming that it might be useful in paying his landlady. 
No ; I sent him no cheques after the first month. A cheque 
was despatched to his landlady each week for board and 
lodging, and a few shillings were placed in the poet's hand, 
periodically, for pocket money, which he accepted with de- 
tachment, his flow of conversation (it was his wont often to 
talk about nothing at exasperating length) uninterrupted. 
The Academy would never have received his fine ' Ode on the 
Death of Cecil Rhodes ' (a commission : completed in fifteen 
hours) had he not been in want that day of pocket money — 
not for collars, not for cabs — for laudanum." 

Tragedy there was in the life of Francis Thompson, but 
there was nothing pitiful. It was a life too deep for pathos. 
He was one of those who were marked by the quickening 
spirit of the times for test of tribulation. The search for 
reality in the Nineties produced many such who were im- 
pelled by the unknown forces of the moment to follow life 
to the very frontier of experience. Consciously or uncon- 
sciously, as we have seen, men were experimenting with life, 
and it would seem also as if life were experimenting with men. 
It was a revolution precipitated by the Time Spirit. Francis 
Thompson represented the revolt against the world. He did 
not, as many had done, defy the world ; he denied it, and, 
by placing his condition beneath contempt, he conquered it. 
That, at least, was the effect of his curious life, and in that 
he was unique even in a period of spiritual and intellectual 
insurrection and suffering. The probability that he took to 
poverty as he took to opium, as a sedative for the malady of 
spirit, does not invalidate tliis view, and the record of his 
pilgrimage and his faith is actually epitomised in the most 
popular and most remarkable of his poems. The Hound of 
Heaven, a work which well might serve as a symbol of the 
spiritual unrest of the whole nineteenth century. But whilst 
every thinker and dreamer of the fin de siecle decade was 
seeking a fuller life through art, or experience, or sensation, 



FRANCIS THOMPSON 173 

or reform, or revolt, or possessions, Francis Thompson was 
finding it in the negation of all these. Whilst others acquired 
for themselves treasures of one kind or another, or sought 
for themselves wonders and achievements of one kind or 
another, he remained both poor and unmoved by liis poverty. 
If mind ever was kingdom to man, Francis Thompson's mind 
a kingdom was to him ; nay, it was the kingdom of God. 

In this great lyric the mystical idea of God as the Hound 
of Heaven eternally pursuing the pilgrims of life until they 
return to Him is autobiographical of a man and an age. 
What better epitome of the mind of the modern world could 
be imagined than the opening stanza ? 

-■ I fled Him, down the nights and down the days ; 
I fled Him down the arches of the years ; 
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways 

Of my own mind ; and in the mist of tears 
I hid from Him, and under running laughter. 
Up vistaed hopes, I sped ; 
And shot, precipitated, 
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears, 
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after." 

There we have the whole desolation of man — the seeker 
who findeth not, for what he seeks seeketh him ; the hunter 
of God hunted by God — and as the poem proceeds we see the 
eternal malady of the spirit, now satiated, now insatiable, in 
the age-long quest for peace and joy in things known and 
seen : 

'- To all swift things for swiftness did I sue ; 
Clung to the whistling mane of every wind. 
But whether they swept, smoothly fleet. 
The long savannahs of the blue ; 
Or whether. Thunder-driven, 
They clanged His chariot 'thwart a heaven 
Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o' their feet : — 
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue." 

Francis Thompson took a delight in simple things which 
recalls Wordsworth's attitude and sometimes that poet's 
accent, particularly in the lines called "Daisy," wherein. 



174 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

after the manner, also, of the Nineties, he celebrates his 
meeting with Innocence in the person of a young girl on the 
Sussex hills near Storrington : 

" She looked a little wistfully, 

Then went her sunshine way : — 
The sea's eye had a mist on it. 
And the leaves fell from the day. 

She went her unremembering way. 

She went, and left in me 
The pang of all the partings gone. 

And partings yet to be. 

She left me marvelling why my soul 

Was sad that she was glad ; 
At all the sadness in the sweet. 

The sweetness in the sad.'-' 

Indeed, it would be easier to find resemblances between 
Francis Thompson and poets so diverse as Wordsworth and 
Shelley than between him and the mystic poets of the seven- 
teenth century. He had the quietism of Wordsworth and 
the exalted sensuousness of Shelley, and he had the funda- 
mental saintliness of both. A life of sordid self-inflicted dis- 
aster could no more affect the strength and cleanliness of his 
spirit than a life of passionate wilfulness could touch the 
purity of the soul of Shelley. But there are definite points 
of divergence between Thompson and the two earlier poets. 
He goes fm'ther with Shelley than with Wordsworth : 
Thompson and Shelley were more akin. The spirituality of 
Wordsworth was, ultimately, moral ; that of Shelley, mystic. 
Had the spirit of Wordsworth been reborn in 1891 it might 
have been rationalistic and ethical : the pride of Noncon- 
formity. But the spirit of Shelley reborn at the same time 
might have been — Francis Thompson. Shelley, it is true, 
sought an unknown God in materialism, and some of his 
prose might easily have been inspired by that Secular Society 
which post-dated him by half-a-century, but his most 
rationalistic moment in song has all the passionate mysticism 
of William Blake. The paganism of Shelley seems to span 



FRANCIS THOMPSON 175 

the years with majestic courage until, weary of the endless 
show of things, it joins forces with Thompson and Christianity. 

The modern poet knew and understood Shelley as few 
have done. For him no "bright but ineffectual angel," this 
soaring creature of em'aptured song, but a child with the 
whole universe for toy-box : " He dabbles his fingers in the 
day-fall. He is gold-dusty with tumbling amidst the stars. 
He makes bright mischief with the moon. The meteors 
nuzzle their noses in his hand. He teases into growling the 
kennelled thunder, and laughs at the shaking of its fiery 
chain. He dances in and out of the gates of heaven ; its 
floor is littered with his broken fancies. He runs wild over 
the fields of ether. He chases the rolling world. He gets 
between the feet of the horses of the sun. He stands in the 
lap of patient Nature, and twines her loosened tresses after 
a hundred wilful fashions, to see how she will look nicest in 
his song." And in this description of Shelley, Thompson 
goes far towards describing himself, but he did not stand " in 
the lap of patient Nature " ; Francis Thompson, childlike 
also, rested in the lap of God. 

Tliis kinship with Shelley in a common Pantheism is 
realised more than elsewhere in Francis Thompson's Anthem 
of Earth, a luxuriant poem in which he retraces with depth 
and beauty, and an added richness, the image he had sum- 
moned to his aid in the essay on his kin-poet : 

'- Then what wild Dionysia I, young Bacchanal, 
Danced in thy lap ! Ah for the gravity ! 
Then, O Earth, thou rang'st beneath me, 
Rocked to Eastward, rocked to Westward, 
Even with the shifted 
Poise and footing of my thought ! 
I brake through thy doors of sunset. 
Ran before the hooves of sunrise. 
Shook thy matron tresses down in fancies 
Wild and wilful 

As a poet's hand could twine them ; 
Caught in my fantasy's crystal chalice 
The Bow, as its cataract of colours 
Plashed to thee downward ; 
Then when thy circuit swung to nightward. 



176 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

Night the abhorrM, night was a new dawning. 

Celestial dawning 

Over the ultimate marges of the soul ; 

Dusk grew turbulent with iire before me. 

And like a windy arras waved with dreams. 

Sleep I took not for my bedfellow. 

Who could waken 

To a revel, an inexhaustible 

Wassail of orgiac imageries ; 

Then while I wore thy sore insignia 

In a little joy, O Earth, in a little joy ; 

Loving thy beauty in all creatures born of thee. 

Children, and the sweet-essenced body of women ; 

Feeling not yet upon my neck thy foot. 

But breathing warm of thee as infants breathe 

New from their mother's morning bosom. '- 

Such earth-love is Pagan rather than Christian, yet it was 
not foreign to the Christianity of Francis Thompson, whose 
orthodoxy did not curtail his worship of Life in many of her 
manifestations — in the stars and the winds, in the flowers 
and children, and in pure womanhood. There was hardly 
anything abnormal about his taste, but everything he wor- 
shipped became distinguished and strange by the wonder- 
maiden imagery of his genius. The foregoing lines are richly 
diapered with luxurious phrases. No other poet of his time 
possessed such jewelled endowment, and few of any other 
time equal him in this gift. Nowhere in English song are 
there poems so heavily freighted with decoration of such 
magnificence ; and no poems approaching, however remotely, 
their regal splendour have the power of suggesting such 
absolute simplicity. Sometimes his " wassail of orgiac 
imageries " becomes the light conceit of liis time, but never 
for long. Francis Thompson soared high above literary 
flightiness. His very luxuriance of expression was austere ; 
it was not the young delight of a Keats in sheer physical 
beauty ; it was the transmutation of sense into spirit by the 
refinement of sense in vision. 



CHAPTER XIII 



JOHN DAVIDSON 



THE Eighteen Nineties had no more remarkable mind 
and no more distinctive poet than John Davidson. 
From the beginning he was both an expression of and 
a protest against the decadent movement, and in his person- 
aUty as well as in his tragic end he represented the struggle 
and defeat of his day in the cause of a bigger sense of life and 
a greater power over personality and destiny. At the dawn 
of the period he had reached middle age, having been born at 
Barrhead, Renfrewshire, on 11th April 1857. But curiously 
enough, as in the case of so many of those who gained dis- 
tinction in art during the period, John Davidson did not 
show any distinctive fin de Steele characteristics until he pro- 
duced his novel, Perfewid, in 1890 ; and between that time 
and 1899 he remained an artist in the approved Whistlerian 
sense, content in the main to express life in the traditional 
artistic manner, without any overweening desire to preach 
a particular doctrine. With the close of the decade his 
mental attitude seems to have undergone a revolution, 
which translated him from an artist pm-e and simple into 
a philosophic missioner using literature as a means of 
propaganda. 

He was the son of Alexander Davidson, a minister of 
the Evangelical Union, and Helen, daughter of Alexander 
Crockett of Elgin. His education began at the Highlanders' 
Academy, Greenock, and continued until he was thirteen 
years of age, when he was sent to work in the chemical 
laboratory of a sugar manufacturer at Greenock, and in the 
following year he became an assistant to the town analyst. 
In 1872 he returned to the Highlanders' Academy as a pupil 
teacher, and remained there for four years, afterwards 
M 177 



178 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

spending a year at Edinburgh University. In 1877 he be- 
came a tutor at Alexander's Charity, Glasgow, and during 
the next six years he held similar scholastic posts at Perth 
and Paisley. During 1884-1885 he was a clerk in a Glasgow 
thread firm, but returned to the scholastic profession in the 
latter year, teaching in Morrison's Academy, Crieff, and in a 
private school at Greenock. During these years he devoted 
much time to literary work, the drama claiming a consider- 
able amount of his attention, and in 1886 his first work, 
Bruce : A Drama, was published in Glasgow. In 1888 he 
published Smith, a Tragic Farce ; in 1889 A71 Unhistorical 
Pastoral, A Romantic Farce and Scaramouch in Naxos. All 
of these were issued in Scotland during his period of scholastic 
employment, but this he abandoned in the year 1889, when 
he departed for London with the object of earning his living 
as a writer. 

Then began a period of literary sti*uggle mitigated some- 
what by the rewards of artistic recognition. In the midst 
of much journalistic work, which included contributions to 
TJie Glasgow Herald, The Sjjeaker and The Yellow Book, he 
produced poems and novels and shoit stories ; he also trans- 
lated Francois Coppee's play. Pour la Couronne, which was 
produced by Forbes Robertson at the Lyceum Theatre 
under the title oiFor the Crown, and Victor Hugo's Ruy Bias, 
produced at the Imperial Theatre as A Queen^s Romance. 

It was his poetry which first won for liim a place among 
his contemporaries. In a Music Hall and Other Poems was 
published in 1891, and during the decade he issued at short 
intervals eight further volumes of poetry, followed by two 
others in the new century. These volumes were Fleet Street 
Eclogues (1893), Ballads and Songs (1894), Fleet Street 
Eclogues, second series (1896), New Ballads (1897;, The Last 
Ballad (1899), Holiday and Other Poems (1906), and Fleet 
Street and Other Poems (1909). In this body of work David- 
son is represented at his highest as an artist, though he him- 
self set more store by the remarkable series of " testaments " 
and philosophical plays and poems which engaged his genius 
during his last phase. In the period covered by his poetic 



JOHN DAVIDSON 179 

activity he published various prose works, such as Sentences 
and Paragraphs (1893), an early volume revealing the scien- 
tific and philosophical interests of his mind, and above all 
his early appreciation of the teaching of Friedrich Nietzsche ; 
A Random Itinerary (1894), and several novels, including 
Baptist Lake (1894) and The Wonderful Mission of Earl 
Lavender (1895), published with Beardsley's frontispiece 
illustrating one of the incidents of the book. 

The books of his last phase are a designed attempt to co- 
ordinate and restate his ideas upon life and art. They begin 
with the first three of his four "testaments " : The Testa- 
ment of a Vivisector (1901), The Testament of a Man Forbid 
(1901), and The Testament of an Empire Builder (1902). He 
brooded long and deeply over the views expressed in these 
works, which reveal a revolutionism transcending all familiar 
attacks upon institutions, secular or religious, for the poet 
lashes with high and passionate seriousness the tyrannies 
not of man, but those also of nature and of fate. Next in 
order of these philosophical works came The Theatrocrat : A 
Tragic Play of Church and State (1905). Later he devised a 
dramatic trilogy, fm'ther to embody his philosophical gospel, 
under the title " God and Mammon " ; but only two of the 
projected plays were written : The Triumph of Mammon 
(1907), and Mammon and his Message (1908). Finally, he 
concluded his message to humanity fittingly enough with 
The Testament of John Davidson (1908). His attitude to- 
wards these works is made clear in his prefaces and other 
notes, and in the dedication to the last volume he describes 
the books as " The Prologue to a Literatm-e that is to be," a 
literature, he adds, "already begun in my Testaments and 
Tragedies." 

Depression rather than disappointment dogged the life of 
John Davidson. It is true that he did not reach fortune by 
his works, but even he could hardly have expected such a 
reward. He did, however, and with justice in the light of so 
much industry, expect to earn a living by his pen, but this 
expectation had but meagre fulfilment. As in the case of 
many other artists he had to pot-boil. Tliis hurt him both 



180 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

in performance and result, for regular income did not spring 
out of the sacrifice. "Nine-tenths of my time," he wrote, 
on his fiftieth birthday, " and that which is more precious, 
have been wasted in the endeavour to earn a livelihood. In 
a world of my own making I should have been writing only 
what should have been written. " These words were written 
in 1907, and the year before he had been awarded a Civil List 
pension of one hundred pounds, but this came too late, how- 
ever, to arouse hope in a temperament which long years of 
struggle with adversity had steeped in a settled gloom. In 
1908 the poet left London with his family for Penzance, and 
on 23rd March 1909 he left his home never to return. Nearly 
six months afterwards liis body was discovered by some 
fishermen in Mount's Bay, and, in accordance with his Iviiown 
wishes, was bm-ied at sea. Such a death is not a surprising 
end to one who adopted or possessed Davidson's attitude 
towards life. He resented the unknown and loathed all 
forms of weakness. He could not accept life as he found it, 
and his pliilosophy reflects liis objection to circumstance and 
fate, actuality and condition, in a passionate claim for control 
over destiny and power, and over life itself. There was no 
reality for him without omnipotence ; he repudiated life on 
any other terms. That was at the root of his depression, as 
it was the basis of his philosophy. 

The assumption that he took his own life is consistent 
with what is known of liis temperament and his ideas. In 
T/je Testament of John Davidson, published the year before 
his death, he anticipates this fate : 

" None should outlive his power. . . . Who kills 
Himself subdues the conqueror of kings : 
Exempt from death is he who takes his life : 
My time has come.'' 

And further on in the same poem he gives suicide a philo- 
sophic basis which has, perhaps, more frankness than novelty : 

" By my own will alone 
The ethereal substance, which I am, attained. 
And now by my own sovereign will, forgoes, 
Self -consciousness ; and thus are men supreme : 



JOHN DAVIDSON 181 

No other living thing can choose to die. 

This franchise and this high prerogative 

I show the world :— Men are the Universe 

Aware at last, and must not live in fear, 

Slaves of the seasons, padded, bolstered up, 

Clystered and drenched and dieted and drugged ; 

Or hateful victims of senility, 

Toothless and like an infant checked and schooled ; 

Or in the dungeon of a sick room drained 

By some tabescent horror in their prime ; 

But when the tide of life begins to turn, 

Before the treason of the ebbing wave 

Divulges refuse and the barren shore. 

Upon the very period of the flood. 

Stand out to sea and bend our weathered sail. 

Against the sunset, valiantly resolved 

To win the heaven of eternal night." 

The poetry of John Davidson reveals on most pages a keen 
sense of Hfe in its various manifestations strugghng for power 
of one kind or another. His imagination is essentially 
dramatic, but his sense of conflict is often philosophic, his 
artistic sense always showing a tendency to give way to the 
imp of reflection which, through his imagination, was ever 
seeking to turn drama into philosophy and philosophy into 
science. Yet he was not immune from a certain whimsi- 
cality, particularly in his early prose works, in the fantastic 
novels, Perfervid, Earl Lavender, and Baptist Lake, and still 
more certainly, with a surer touch of genius, in his panto- 
mime Scaramouch in Naxos. In the " Prologue " to this play, 
spoken by Silenus, Davidson goes far towards summing up 
Ms own pecuhar attitude. The speaker alludes to a fondness 
for pantomimes, and proceeds to say : " I don't know 
whether I like tliis one so well as those which I witnessed 
when I was a boy. It is too pretentious, I think ; too 
anxious to be more than a Pantomime — this play in which I 
am about to perform. True Pantomime is a good-natured 
nightmare. Our sense of humour is titillated and strummed, 
and kicked and oiled, and fustigated and stroked, and ex- 
alted and bedevilled, and, on the whole, severely handled 
by this self-same harmless incubus ; and our intellects are 



182 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

scoffed at. The audience, in fact, is, intellectually, a panta- 
loon, on whom the Harlequin-pantomime has no mercy. It 
is frivolity whipping its schoolmaster, common-sense ; the 
drama on its apex ; art, unsexed, and without a conscience ; 
the reflection of the world in a green, knotted glass. Now, I 
talked to the author and showed him that there was a certain 
absence from his work of this kind of thing ; but he put his 
thumbs in his arm-pits, and replied with some disdain, 
' Which of the various dramatic forms of the time may one 
conceive as likeliest to shoot up in the fabulous manner 
of the beanstalk, bearing on its branches things of earth 
and heaven undreamt of in philosophy ? The sensational 
dramas ? Perhaps from them some new development of 
tragic art ; but Pantomime seems to be of best hope. It 
contains in crude forms, humour, poetry, and romance. It 
is childhood of a new poetical comedy. ' Then I saw where 
he was and said, ' God be with you,' and washed my hands 
of him." Here we have Davidson, as early as 1888, con- 
cerned about something new in art, something elastic enough 
to contain a big expression of modernity, of that modernity 
which in the Eighteen Nineties, and in John Davidson more 
than in any other British writer of the time, was more than 
half reminiscent of the classical Greek idea of eternal conflictj^ 

But with Davidson and the moderns, led philosophically 
by Nietzsche, Davidson's earliest master, the eternal conflict 
was not regarded with Greek resignation. It was looked 
upon as a thing which might be directed by the will of man. 
The modern idea was to make conflict a means of growth to- 
wards power : the stone upon which man might sharpen the 
metal of his will until he could literally storm high heaven 
by his own might. Such an idea, often vague and chaotic 
enough, inspired the hour, making philosophers of artists 
and artists of philosophers, and seekers after a new elixir of 
life of all who were sufficiently alive to be modern. This 
idea, more than any other, informed the moods of the 
moment with restless curiosity and revolt. It filled the 
optimist with the conviction that he lived in a glorious 
period of transition which might at any moment end in 



JOHN DAVIDSON 183 

Utopia, and the pessimist with the equally romantic notion 
that the times were so much out of joint that nothing 
short of their evacuation for the past or the future would 
avail. As Davidson sang : 

'' The Present is a dungeon dark 
Of social problems. Break the gaol ! 
Get out into the splendid Past 
Or bid the splendid Future hail." 

This resentment of the present was always Davidson's 
weakness despite an intellectual courage in which he had 
few equals in his time. 

He could face with heroic fortitude the necessity of re- 
valuing ideas, just as he could face the necessity of revalu- 
ing his own life by suicide. But he could not face the slings 
and arrows of outrageous fortune. He never realised that 
a man and his age were identical, or that tragedy was an 
essential of life to be courted even by the powerful. (" Deep 
tragedy," said Napoleon, "is the school of great men.") 
Instead of that he murmured against that which thwarted 
and checked him, regretting the absence of might to mould 
the world for his own convenience. That was his contribu- 
tion to the decadence. The bigness of him, unknown to 
himself, was the fact that he did fight for the integrity of his 
own personality and ideas, and he did accomplish their con- 
servation, even to rounding off his own life-work with a final 
"testament." But when one has said all one is forced to 
admit that the irregularities and incongruities of his genius 
were nothing less than the expression and mark of his time. 

It is as a poet that Davidson must ultimately stand or 
fall, although the philosophy he expressed in his later 
volumes will doubtless attract far more attention than that 
which greeted its inception. At first glance his poetry sug- 
gests a limited outlook, and even a limited technique ; but 
on closer acquaintance this view cannot be maintained. 
John Davidson is as varied as he is excellent, and as chamiing 
in moments of light- heartedness as he is noble in his tragic 
moods. Time probably will favour his ballads, but it will by 
no means neglect the magic poetry of his eclogues, nor the 



184 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

grandeur of certain passages in his poetic dramas. And it is 
not easy to believe that the deHcate lyricism of some of his 
shorter poems will ever pass out of the favour of those who 
love great verse. Such a poem is "In Romney Marsh," 
finely balanced in phrase and image, and rising to a magnifi- 
cent climax of metaphorical description in the two last verses : 

■- Night sank : like flakes of silver fire 

The stars in one great shower came down ; 
Shrill blew the wind ; and shrill the wire 
Rang out from Hythe to Romney town. 

The darkly shining salt sea drops 

Streamed as the waves clashed on tlie shore ; 
The beach, with all its organ stops 
Pealing again, prolonged the roar."- 

Even in his last volume of verse, when ideas rather than 
imaginative inventions crowded his mind, he proved in many 
a poem the invincibility of his lyrical gift. The title-poem 
itself, "Holiday," equals any of his earlier lyrics, and com- 
pares well with even the best of his ballads. And he has 
wrought a solemn grandeiu* into the short crisp lines of the 
impassioned and deeply felt poem called " The Last Song " : 

-- Death is but a trance : 
Life, but now begun ! 
Welcome change and chance : 
Though my days are done. 
Let the planets dance 
Lightly round the sun ! 
Morn and evening clasp 

Earth with loving hands — 
In a ruddy grasp 

All the pleasant lands ! 

Now I hear the deep 

Bourdon of the bee. 
Like a sound asleep 

Wandering o'er the lea ; 
While the song-birds keep 
Urging nature's plea. 
Hark ! The violets pray 
Swooning in the sun ! 
Hush ! the roses say 

Love and death are one ! -- 



JOHN DAVIDSON 185 

It does not need a very wide acquaintance with Davidson's 
poetry to realise how he was affected by the natural life of his 
native countryside and the country places of his residence. 
He saw the phenomena of field and hedgerow and woodland 
\\dth clear eye and appreciative exactitude. But he did not 
immolate his personality at the sln-ine of Nature after the 
manner of Wordsworth or Shelley. His appreciation was in 
the main sensuous and aesthetic, serving to supply the poet 
with some of the fanciful materials of his art, for use in the 
more buoyant moments of his muse. 

Throughout the whole of his poems passages abound in 
which Nature has thus been made to render the sort of 
tribute Keats demanded of her, as for instance in the follow- 
ing passage from one of the earlier eclogues : — 

" At early dawn through London you must go 
Until you come where long black hedgerows grow. 
With pink buds pearled, with here and there a tree, 

And gates and stiles ; and watch good country folk ; 

And scent the spicy smoke 
Of withered weeds that burn where gardens be ; 
And in a ditch perhaps a primrose see. 
The rooks shall stalk the plough, larks mount the skies, 

Blackbirds and speckled thrushes sing aloud. 

Hid in the warm white cloud 
Mantling the thorn, and far away shall rise 
The milky low of cows and farmyard cries. 
From windy heavens the climbing sun shall shine, 

And February greet you like a maid 

In russet-cloak arrayed ; 
And you shall take her for your mistress fine, 
And pluck a crocus for her valentine."- 

This keen sense of country sights and sounds reaches its 
highest in "A Runnable Stag," a lyric which stands alone 
among English poems for its musical realism and its vividly 
suggested but unstated sentiment : 

" When the pods went pop on the broom, green broom. 
And apples began to be golden-skinned. 
We harboured a stag in the Priory comb. 

And we feathered his trail up-wind, up-wind. 
We feathered his trail up-wind — 



186 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

A stag of warrant, a stag, a stag, 
A runnable stag, a kingly crop. 
Brow, bay and tray and three on top, 
A stag, a runnable stag.'-' 

The subject brings to mind the callous stag-hunting 
chapter in Richard Jefferies' book, Red Deer, but different 
are the sentiments underlying poem and essay^ — in the former 
human feeling colours realism with pity at the stag harried 
to death in the sea, when 

" Three hundred gentlemen, able to ride. 

Three hundred horses as gallant and free. 
Beheld him escape on the evening tide. 
Far out till he sank in the Severn Sea, 
Till he sank in the depths of the sea — 
The stag, the buoyant stag, the stag 
That slept at last in a jewelled bed 
Under the sheltering oceans spread. 
The stag, the runnable stag." 

Davidson without comment reveals the pity of it all, but 
Richard Jefferies is capable of describing a similar incident 
in the passionless terms of photography. 

Sympathy with pain, oftener of the spirit than of the flesh, 
links John Davidson with the Humanist movement of his 
time and ours, but it does not imprison him in a specific 
category. Labels cannot be attached to him. He was 
not associated with anj^ coterie or organisation. He was as 
strange to the Rhymers' Club as he was to the Fabian Society 
or the Humanitarian League, and although circumstances 
brought him into the Bodley Head group of writers, giving 
some of his books decorations by Beardsley, and his portrait, 
by Will Rothenstein, to The Yellow Book, the facts must be 
set down to Mr John Lane's sense of what was new and strong 
in literature rather than to any feeling of kinship on David- 
son's part. Kinsman of modernity in the big sense, he was 
not, then, in the brotherhood of any clique or special group 
of modernists, and although his works were as modern in the 
smaller topical aspect as they are part of a larger and more 



JOHN DAVIDSON 187 

notable awakening of thought and imagination, they never 
achieved even a small measure of the popularity usually 
accorded topical writings. Davidson's work, even in what 
may be considered its most popular form, in his great 
ballads, was esteemed by a few rather than accepted by 
many. It is conceivable that in due time "The Ballad 
of a Nun," "The Ballad of an Artist's Wife" and "The 
Ballad of Hell " will enter into the familiar poetry of the 
nation, as they have taken their places in the realm of 
good poetry recognised by the cultured. But that time 
is not yet ; a higher average of culture must come about 
before such verses could supplant ' ' Christmas Day in the 
Workhouse," or even Rudyard Kipling's ballad of "The 
Mary Glocester " or "Gunga Din." 

Davidson himself eventually rejected in some measure his 
own lyric verse. He came to look upon rhyme as a symptom 
of decadence, although he knew that " decadence in any art 
is always the manm*e and root of a higher manifestation of 
that art," He sought therefore to discover in the art of 
poetry, as he sought also in life, a newer and more apt means 
of expression. This he found in English blank verse. And 
he associated his discovery with the final profundity of his 
passionately asserted vision of life as matter seeking ever 
finer and more effective manifestations, " Matter says its 
will in poetry ; above all, in English blank verse, and often, 
as in the case of Milton, entirely against the conscious inten- 
tion of the poet," In this verse form, "the subtlest, most 
powerful, and most various organ of utterance articulate 
faculty has produced," he saw the latest emanation of what 
he calls the " concrete mystery Matter," created, " like folk, 
or flowers, or cholera, or war, or lightning, or light," by an 
evolutionary process involving all activities and states of 
consciousness, until it produced that powerful human race 
which " poured into England instinctively as into the womb 
of the future, and having fought there together for centuries 
. . . wrestling together for the mastery, and producing in 
the struggle the blended breed of men we know : so tried 
and welded, so tempered and damascened, this English race 



188 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

having thrown off the fetters of a worn-out creed, having 
obtained the kingdom of the sea and begun to lay hands as 
by right on the new world, burst out into blank verse with- 
out premeditation, and earth thrilled to its centre \vith de- 
light that Matter had found a voice at last." Poetry for him 
was thus no scholarly accomplishment, no mere decoration 
or bauble, but the very instrument of thought and imagina- 
tion, emotion and passion, the finely tempered weapon of a 
nationalism wliich he linked up with Nature and endowed 
with her fierceness, mastery and power. 

His sense of the high mission of poetry found ample ex- 
pression in the prefaces and appendices of his later books, 
and in his " testaments," But in earlier days he heard him- 
self speaking of the meaning and object of his own poetry in 
"A Ballad of Heaven," where the musician announces the 
completion of the mastei*piece wliich " signed the sentence 
of the sun " and crowned " the great eternal age " : 

" The slow adagio begins ; 

The winding-sheets are ravelled out 

That swathe the minds of men, the sins 

That wrap their rotting souls about. 

The dead are heralded along ; 

With silver trumps and golden drums, 
And flutes and oboes, keen and strong, 

My brave andante singing comes. 

Then like a python's sumptuous dress 

The frame of things is cast away, 
And out of Time's obscure distress. 

The thundering scherzo crashes Day." 

Davidson's self-imposed mission was to thunder news of a 
new dawn. He repudiated the past ("Tlie insane past of 
mankind is the incubus," he said), and, whilst insisting upon 
the importance of the present, he heralded the new day to 
come with an ardour equalled only by the Futurists of Milan, 
who followed liim, and are his nearest intellectual Idn, Had 
John Davidson lived to-day he must have hailed Marinetti 



JOHN DAVIDSON 189 

brother. " Undo the past ! " he cried, in The Testament 
of a Man Forbid : 

" Undo the past ! 
The rainbow reaches Asgard now no more ; 
Olympus stands untenanted ; the dead 
Have their serene abode in earth itself. 
Our womb, our nurture and our sepulchre. 
Expel the sweet imaginings, profound 
Humanities and golden legends, forms 
Heroic, beauties, tripping shades, embalmed 
Through hallowed ages in the fragrant hearts 
And generous blood of men ; the climbing thoughts 
Whose roots ethereal grope among the stars. 
Whose passion-flowers perfume eternity, 
Weed out and tear, scatter and tread them down ; 
Dismantle and dilapidate liigh heaven.'^ 

Being a poet, and Davidson never made any other claim, 
he would use poetry to help undo the past. " The statement 
of the present and the creation of the future," he said, "are 
the very body and soul of poetry." Of his later intentions 
he declared, "I begin deiinitely in my Testaments and 
Tragedies to destroy this unfit world and make it over again 
in my own image." He was never weary of asserting the 
novelty of his aim and method, and although he admitted 
that there was no language for what he had to say, he was 
convinced that what he had said was both new in fofrm 
and idea. "It is a new poetry I bring, a new poetry for 
the first time in a thousand years." He called this new 
poetry "an abiding-place for man as matter-of-fact," and 
his own purpose in wiiting it, " to say that which is, to 
speak for the universe. " And the ultimate aim of such work 
was, again in his own words, "to change the mood of the 
world. " 

Nor was he less precise, nor less frank, in stating the new 
mood he would establish in the place of the old. In the fin 
de Steele search for reality few possessed his diligence, fewer 
his intellectual courage. The terrible and powerful poem, 
"A Woman and Her Son," recalls something of his own 



190 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

unrelenting criticism of life ; his own determination at all 
costs to face facts and re- value ideas : 

" These are times 
When all must to the crucible — no thought, 
Practice, or use, or custom sacro-sanct 
But shall be violable now."- 

Early association with the ideas of Nietzsche had directed 
Davidson's innate pessimism into channels of creative 
inquisitiveness and speculation. He learnt more from 
Nietzsche than did any other poet of his time,, but he never 
became a disciple. He learnt of that philosophical courage 
which Nietzsche called "hardness," and used it Nietzsche- 
wise in his continual questioning and re-valuing of accepted 
ideas. He was imbued also with the German philosopher's 
reverence for power. But he did not accept the Superman 
doctrine. This he repudiated equally with the Darwinian 
idea of sexual selection ; both stood condemned by him be- 
cause of their anthropomorphism — what in fact Nietzsche 
condemned in other directions as being "human-all-too- 
human." Against the idea of evolution by sexual selection, 
with the ultimates man and then superman, he set the idea 
of chemical selection, with the ultimate object of complete 
self-consciousness. Beyond self-consciousness he saw no- 
tliing ; that in his view was the highest possible achieve- 
ment of life. The essence of his teaching is based in the idea 
of Matter as the final manifestation of ether seeking, first, 
consciousness, which it has long since attained, and next, 
self-consciousness, which it has attained more recently in 
man. This last form of consciousness, according to David- 
son, is capable of the highest ecstasy and all knowledge. He 
denies the inconceivability of eternity, the existence at any 
time of chaos, and the presence at any time of spirit. All is 
Matter, even the ether and the lightning are forms of Matter. 
And on this basis he works out a conception of sin as courage, 
heaven and hell as " memories of processes of evolution 
struggHng into consciousness," and God as ether, from which 
man came and to wliich he will retmui. 



JOHN DAVIDSON 191 

In announcing this theory of the universe he does not ask 
for scientific judgment or acceptance. He bases his claim 
for recognition on imaginative grounds and on the fact that 
he is a poet. "The world," he wrote, "is in danger of a 
new fanaticism, of a scientific instead of a religious tyi'anny. 
This is my jjrotest. In the course of many ages the mind of 
man may be able to grasp the world scientifically : in the 
meantime we can know it only poetically ; science is still a 
valley of dead bones till imagination breathes upon it." It 
was his desire as a poet to fill the conceptions of science, the 
world of atoms and electrons, of gases and electricity, of 
ether and matter, with the light of imagination, as a substi- 
tute for the dead rationalism of middle nineteenth-century 
culture. " Art knows very well that the world comes to an 
end when it is purged of Imagination. Rationalism was 
only a stage in the process. For the old conception of a 
created Universe, with the fall of man, an atonement, and a 
heaven and hell, the form and substance of the imagination 
of Christendom, Rationalism had no substitute. Science 
was not ready, but how can poetry wait ? Science is 
synonymous with patience ; poetry is impatience incarnate. 
If you take away the symbol of the Universe in which, since 
the Christian era began, poetry and all great art lived and 
had their being, I, for one, decline to continue the eviscer- 
ated Life-in-Death of Rationalism. I devour, digest, and 
assimilate the Universe ; make for myself in my Testaments 
and Tragedies a new form and substance of Imagination ; 
and by poetic power certify the semi-certitudes of science." 

In the Eighteen Nineties John Davidson strove always for 
the utterance of such feelings and ideas as absorbed his mind 
during his last years ; but in the earlier period he was less 
conscious of definite aim, and his best work took the form 
of poetry and the place of great poetry. His ballads and 
eclogues, a few of Ms lyrics and passages in his poetic 
tragedies are already graven on the scroll of immortal verse. 
His " testaments " belonged to another realm as they belong 
also to another period. They lack the old fine flavour of the 
poetry of liis less purposeful days, and they hardly fulfil his 



192 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

own promise of a new poetrj\ They are in the main arrested 
poetry. The strife of the poet for a new expression, a new 
poetic vahie, is too evident, and you lay these later works 
down baffled and unconvinced, but reverent before the 
courage and honesty of a mind valiantly beating itself to 
destruction against the locked and barred door of an un- 
known and perhaps non-existent reality. 



CHAPTER XIV 



ENTER — G.B.S. 



MOST of the distinguished personalities of the 
Eighteen Nineties challenged somebody or some- 
thing. George Bernard Shaw challenged every- 
body and everything. He began the period as one entering 
the lists, and he has tilted more or less successfully ever 
since. No other man of the time broke so many lances as 
he, and looking backwards one is filled with amazement at 
his prodigaUty of ideas and wit, his persistent audacity and 
unfailing cheerfulness. Yet these very qualities limited his 
effectiveness, for it took even "the intellectuals," whose 
high priest he became, twenty years to realise that he was 
in earnest and a genius. G.B.S. was Challenge incarnate — 
a rampant note of interrogation, eternally asking us uncom- 
fortable questions about oiu" most cherished habits. Why, 
for instance, we ate meat ? Why we vivisected animals ? 
Why we owned property ? Why we tolerated such a brain- 
less drama — such unimaginative art — such low wages — 
such long hours of labour — such inconvenient houses — such 
adulteration— such dirty cities — such illogical morals — such 
dead religions — in short, such a chaotic civilisation ? And 
he did not wait for us to answer his innumerable questions ; 
he answered them himself, or provoking a defence by 
a process of irritation, he smashed om* replies with the 
nicest of dialectical art ; tempting us in the pauses of our 
bewilderment with a new vision of Ufe. 

In the year 1890 Bernard Shaw was hardly a name to 
those who were outside of convinced Socialist and revolu- 
tionary circles, although his articles on music, over the 
pseudonym Corno di Bassetto, in The Star (1888-1890), after- 
wards continued in The World from 1890-1894, made him 
N 193 



194 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

the subject of discussion in musical circles. Socialists knew 
him as a tireless and effective propagandist of the collectiv- 
ism upheld by the Fabian Society, of which organisation he 
was one of the most able members, and as the editor of the 
famous Fabian Essays in Socialism (1889), which contained 
two essays by himself, one of which had been delivered 
before the Economic Section at the Bath Meeting of the 
British Association, in the preceding year. He was also 
known in the inner circles of Socialism as a persistent enemy 
of the Marxian theory of value, which he attacked on every 
possible occasion. He was introduced to a wider public as 
a result of the first production of Ibsen's plays in London. 
Rosniersholm, Ghosts and Hedda Gabler had been performed 
by the Stage Society, and the astonishment of the dramatic 
critics had expressed hopeless bewilderment and surprise 
in a venomous Press attack. The year before Shaw had 
lectured upon Henrik Ibsen before the Fabian Society at the 
St James' Restaurant, and this lecture, rewritten in the form 
of a reply to the critics, was produced as a book in 1891, 
under the title of The Quintessence of Ibsenism. And in 1892 
he followed up this defence of the modern drama A\dth a play 
of his own. Widowers' Houses, which was produced by 
Mr J. T. Grein at the Royalty Theatre and published in book 
form during the same year. 

Between 1879 and 1883 Bernard Shaw began his literary 
career by writing five novels. The results were not en- 
couraging from the publishing side, four only, after many 
vicissitudes, achieving print, and one only, Cashel Byron's 
Profession, receiving anything approaching recognition from 
Press or pubhc. So, checked but undismayed, he turned, 
like more than one unsuccessful novelist, to the sister art of 
drama. The rest of the decade was devoted to laying the 
foundation of that reputation which has placed him in the 
forefront of the modern dramatic movement. Between 1892 
and 1896 he wrote, besides Widowers' Houses : — The Phil- 
anderer : A Topical Cmnedy ; Mrs Warren's Profession : 
A Play ; Arms and the Man : A Comedy ; Candida : A 
Mystery ; 2'he Man of Destiny : A Trifle ; and You Never 



ENTER— G.B.S. 195 

Can Tell : A Comedy. These were afterwards collected and 
published in 1898 in two volumes called Plays : Pleasant and 
Unpleasant, prefaced by one of those essays which are his 
favourite medium for the interpretation of himself and his 
ideas to a shy-witted public. Three other plays, The DeviVs 
Disciple, Ccesar and Cleopatra, and Captain Brassbound'' s 
Conversion, followed, and were published, in the volume 
called Three Plays for Puritans, in 1901. Public perform- 
ances of most of the plays were given, but it was not until 
the dawn of the new century and the historic Vedrcnne- 
Barker repertoire season at the Court Theatre (1904-1907) 
that the general playgoing public was convinced of even the 
entertainment value of these remarkable dramas. But lack 
of public appreciation sat lightly on the shoulders of Bernard 
Shaw. Seemingly possessed of exhaustless energy, and quite 
indifferent to neglect, he went on with his work, putting his 
ideas and arguments into such essays as the Impossibilities 
of 'Anarchism (1893) ; The Perfect Wagnerite (1898) ; Fabian- 
ism and the Empire (1900) ; and into the long series of 
dramatic criticisms contributed to The Saturday Review be- 
tween 1895 and 1898. Whenever occasion offered he carried 
his warfare into current polemics by means of letters to the 
Press, and one of these, attacking Max Nordau's Degenera- 
tion, published in the American Anarchist paper Liberty 
(27th July 1895), probably forms a record of its kind, for it 
fills practically the whole of that issue of the paper, and has 
since been pubhshed in a volume entitled The Sanity of Art. 
He also associated himself with the more typical literary 
movement of the period by contributing an essay " On Going 
to Church " to The Savoy. 

In all this work Bernard Shaw assumed the role of critic. 
The newly awakened social conscience found in him a willing 
and effective instrument, and despite his unabashed and often 
self-announced cleverness, the intellectual vice of the time, 
mere "brilliance," critical or otherwise, was rarely for him 
an end in itself, as was the wit of Oscar Wilde and Max 
Beerbohm. His cleverness subserved a creative end, an 
end which looked forward towards a new and resplendent 



196 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

civilisation. It was the sharp edge of the sword of purpose. 
He did not scruple to enlist the forces of art in his service, 
and his plays, therefore, are invariably didactic, though 
relieved from dullness by abundant wit, much humour and 
vivid flashes of characterisation. Such plays, for instance, 
as Widowers'' Houses and Mrs Warren^ s Profession are pure 
sociology in the form of drama, or rather melodrama, for 
Shaw is the melodramatist of the intellect. He seeks to do 
for the head what Charles Reade sought to do for the heart, 
and there is no fundamental difference between the inspira- 
tion at the back of Widowers' Houses and IVs Never Too Late 
to Mend : both are dramatised tracts. 

Art for art's sake had come to its logical conclusion in de- 
cadence, and Bernard Shaw joined issue with the ascendant 
spirit of the times, whose more recent devotees have adopted 
the expressive phrase : art for life's sake. It is probable 
that the decadents meant much the same thing, but they 
saw life as intensive and individual, whereas the later view 
is universal in scope. It roams extensively over humanity, 
realising the collective soul. The decadent art idea stood 
for individuals, and saw humanity only as a panoramic back- 
ground. The ascendant view promotes the background to a 
front place ; it sees life communally and sees it whole, and 
refuses to allow individual encroachments. Bernard Shaw 
upheld this vision of life, and strove to square it with his own 
inborn and emphatic individuality. He considered it legiti- 
mate to use art to establish and extend his ideas. " Fine 
art," he said, " is the subtlest, the most seductive, the most 
effective means of moral propagandism in the world, except- 
ing only the example of personal conduct ; and I waive even 
this exception in favour of the art of the stage, because it 
works by exhibiting examples of personal conduct made in- 
telligible and moving to crowds of unobservant, unreflecting 
people to whom real life means nothing." In the epistolary 
essay to Liberty he emphasised and detailed his sense of the 
moral value of art, revealing his divergence from the Ruskin- 
Morris view of art as joyful work, as well as from the views 
of Gautier and Baudelaire : 



ENTER-G.B.S. 197 

" The claim of art to our respect must stand or fall with 
the validity of its pretension to cultivate and refine our senses 
and faculties until seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling and 
tasting become highly conscious and critical acts with us, 
protesting vehemently against ugliness, noise, discordant 
speech, frowsy clothing and foul air, and taking keen interest 
and pleasure in beauty, in music, and in the open air, besides 
making us insist, as necessary for comfort and decency, on 
clean, wholesome, handsome fabrics to wear, and utensils of 
fine material and elegant workmanship to handle. Further, 
art should refine our sense of character and conduct, of jus- 
tice and sympathy, greatly heightening our self-knowledge, 
self-control, precision of action, and considerateness, and 
making us intolerant of baseness, cruelty, injustice and 
intellectual superficiality or vulgarity. The worthy artist 
or craftsman is he who responds to this cultivation of the 
physical or moral senses by feeding them with pictures, 
musical compositions, pleasant houses and gardens, good 
clothes and fine implements, poems, fictions, essays and 
dramas, which call the heightened senses and ennobled 
faculties into pleasurable activity. The greatest artist 
is he who goes a step beyond the demand, and, by 
supplying works of a higher beauty and a higher interest 
than have yet been perceived, succeeds, after a brief 
struggle with its strangeness, in adding this fresh ex- 
tension of sense to the heritage of the race. This is why 
we value art : this is why we feel that the iconoclast 
and the Puritan are attacking something made holier, 
by solid usefulness, than their own theories of purity ; 
this is why art has won the privileges of religion ; so 
that London shopkeepers who would fiercely resent a 
compulsory church rate, who do not know ' Yankee Doodle ' 
from ' God save the Queen, ' and who are more interested 
in the photograph of the latest celebrity than in the 
Velasquez portraits in the National Gallerj^, tamely allow 
the London County Council to spend their money on bands, 
on municipal art inspectors, and on plaster casts from the 
antique." 



198 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

Bernard Shaw strove to add to the heritage of the race a 
keener sense of reality. He called it "the sense of fact." 
And it was in pursuit of this idea that he defended the art of 
the French Impressionists and Richard Wagner and Henrik 
Ibsen. Much of his humour is based on the portrayal of the 
incongruity between those who see things clearly and those 
who don't ; between the faculty of seeing life and experi- 
encing life with frank individual conviction, and the habit of 
seeing and living by the proxies of convention and tradition. 
His wit is designedly explosive, but only apparently impudent 
and irreverent, for it seeks to startle a moribund society out 
of its stultif3ang habits, duties and ideals. In The Quint- 
essence of Ibsenism he upholds realism against idealism, with 
the plays of Ibsen as text. But his sense of reality does not 
take reason for its basis. The basis of the new realism is 
the will. Reason takes the subsidiary place of defender of 
the will, and will and faith are treated as one. Reason does 
not indicate direction to the will, it proves that wilfulness is 
right- — after the act. Shaw says, in effect, do what you want 
to do and then prove you are right. It will thus be seen 
that anything in the nature of an ideal, a formal duty or a 
fixed habit must necessarily conflict with the realist attitude. 
"The realist . . . loses patience with ideals altogether, and 
sees in them only something to blind us, something to numb 
us, something whereby instead of resisting death, we can 
disarm it by committing suicide." He associates his attack 
upon ideals with the idea of stripping the mask from the face 
of reality which is life. 

Rationalism found a convinced and subtle enemy in this 
new master of dialectics, for those whose minds could survive 
the laughter provoked by the humorous presentation of the 
Shavian doctrine realised quickly enough, and, if they were 
rationalists, tragically enough, that the moral and religious 
system rationalism had expended so much energy in attack- 
ing was really rationalism triumphant. Shaw announced that 
civilisation was rational but wrong. Yet in the Eighteen 
Nineties he had no place for mysticism in his view of life. 
The rationalists came to grief by reasoning about something. 



ENTER-G.B.S. 199 

and Shaw did not think it possible to improve matters by 
becoming a mystic and "reasoning about nothing." Since 
then he has modified his view, but now as then his sole aim 
has been the conquest of reaUty, This is brought out no- 
where so clearly as in the " Interlude " in Man and Swper- 
7nan, and in one passage, that in which Don Juan explains 
his ideas of heaven and hell, we have the quintessence of 
Shavianism. " Do you suppose heaven is like earth ? " 
Don Juan asks Ana ; " where people persuade themselves 
that what is done can be undone by repentance ; that what 
is spoken can be unspoken by ^vithdrawing it ; that what is 
true can be annihilated by a general agreement to give it the 
lie ? No ; heaven is the home of the masters of reality : 
that is why I am going thither. " Ana answers that she has 
had quite enough reality on earth and that she is going to 
heaven for happiness. Don Juan advises her to remain in 
hell for " hell is the home of the unreal and of the seekers 
for happiness. It is the only refuge from heaven, which is 
. . . the home of the masters of reality, and from earth which 
is the home of the slaves of reality." And again he says he 
would enjoy the contemplation of that which interests him 
above all things — " namely, Life : the force that ever strives 
to attain greater power of contemplating itself." The end 
of this contemplation is to be the creation of a brain capable 
of wielding an imagination fine enough to help Life in its 
struggle upward. 

With such a conception of life and its purpose Bernard 
Shaw entered the lists, advocating many causes which might 
tend towards the realisation of his idea. He managed to 
combine a firm anti-romantic attitude with convinced 
humanitarian preferences. Thus he became vegetarian, anti- 
vaccinationist, anti-vivisectionist and Socialist. His argu- 
ments and advocacy were able, and therefore useful to all of 
these causes, but it was as a Socialist that his genius for 
propaganda displayed itself to best advantage. Long before 
the outer public had heard of him, innumerable people whose 
minds were ripening under social and industrial discontent 
came under the spell of his eloquence in revolutionary 



200 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

club rooms, in Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park and other 
open-air ibrunis of the people, and at the meetings of the 
Fabian Society. It was at the Fabian Society that he was 
heard to best advantage, for there he was matched in debate 
with some of the keenest intelligences and quickest minds 
in London. 

To Socialism, however, he contributed no original thought. 
He was in the main content to advocate and buttress with 
eloquence and dialectic the collectivist opportunism of his 
friend, Sidney Webb. The constitutional methods of Webb 
and the Fabian Society have indeed seemed at times difficult 
to square with Bernard Shaw's written views of what ought 
to be the true attitude of a revolutionist. Particularly is 
this obvious in such later plays as Man and Super?nan and 
Major Barbara, where there are expressions which it is not 
easy to construe otherwise than as advocacy of direct action 
and revolt. Even in his Fabian utterances he has not always 
taken the orthodox Fabian line, which is always uncom- 
promisingly middle-class, as, for instance, in his insistence 
on the complete acceptance of the idea of economic equality 
as the only basis of the Socialist state, and it is conceivable 
that, if the revolutionary philosophy of Shaw's plays were 
pushed to its logical conclusion, their author would find him- 
self in the ranks of those Socialists who believe less in parlia- 
mentary and legal processes of reform than in active revolt. 

Bernard Shaw's original contribution to the intellectual 
awakening of the Eighteen Nineties was not so much an idea 
as a new attitude of approaching all ideas and all facts. The 
approach by criticism is by no means a novel method in itself, 
but it is always a novelty in the stable mental atmosphere 
of English and, indeed, Teutonic culture. Anything in the 
nature of criticism and its correlatives, satire and caricature, 
are treated by most people in this country as mere irrever- 
ence. Shaw has always been considered irreverent, though 
probably few more earnest and essentially religious men ever 
existed. But the cumulative effect of his wit has moved a 
mountain range of indifference, and although the majority 
of those who go to his plays go to laugh and remain to laugh 



ENTER-G.B.S. 201 

(often beyond reason), many remain to laugh and pray. 
These plays have had a more immediate and more intelligent 
success in Germany, but they have attracted little attention 
in France. This is not quite so hard to explain as it might 
appear at first sight. In England we could not see the 
seriousness of Shaw because his critical attack being local 
hit us before his humour could win home. In Germany a 
similar mental milieu greeted him more readily because his 
irreverence, apparently the outcome of criticism of British 
institutions and morals, but really a criticism of modern 
civilised morality, did not hit Germany so hard, and conse- 
quently his wit was free to carry on its subtle trade in phil- 
osophy. But in France Shavianism was no new thing. 
Criticism had been freer in that country for over a century 
than in any other country in the world. Wit was no 
rarity ; diabolonian humour no uncommon weapon, and 
idea-play no novelty. France in fact was the birthplace of 
modernity, and the modernity of Shaw was outmoded there 
before we began to notice its existence here. Whilst England 
and Germany were murmuring delightedly "brilliant" — - 
" daring " — ^" clever "—at each successive Shavian sally, the 
land of Voltaire and Rousseau, Baudelaire and Zola, Anatole 
France and Brieux, could only say : " Vieuxjeu ! " — Queen 
Anne's dead ! 

Shaw's success in England has not been in any way national. 
It is at best a class acceptance and generally bourgeois. The 
mass of the people know him only as a name frequently 
appearing in the papers, and often enough in connection 
with some statement or idea which to them seemed incom- 
prehensible or freakish. The reason is not far to seek, for 
Bernard Shaw is an apostle to the Middle Class, as, indeed, 
he is a product of that class. He displays all its character- 
istics in his personality and his art, what are called his 
eccentricities of thought and expression being often little 
more than advertisements of his own respectability. Puri- 
tanical, economical, methodical, deeply conscious of responsi- 
bility and a sound man of affairs, he sums up in his own 
personality all the virtues of the class satirised by Ibsen 



202 thp: eighteen nineties 

in The Pillars of Society. An examination ol" his most 
'' advanced " ideas urges the point ; for even his dialectic 
is bourgeois from its nicest subtleties to its most outrageous 
explosions. When he shocks the middle classes, which he 
does very often, he shocks them with the sort of squibs 
they would let off to shock themselves for fun ; and when he 
argues with them he uses precisely the kind of argument they 
use in defence of the things they already know and like. As 
a Socialist he invariably appeals to the bourgeois instinct of 
self-interest ; and much of his philosophy is a modern varia- 
tion of the bourgeois ideals of self-help and self-reliance — 
namely, self-assertion. He tells the bourgeoisie that they are, 
politically, the neglected and abused class, and advises them 
to retaliate upon their oppressors by adopting a Socialism 
broad-based in the Utopian dream of a nationalised respect- 
ability. And when his interested, but by no means convinced, 
hearers stumble over the horrible thought that they may have 
to abandon the financial basis of their estate, Bernard Shaw 
produces a defence of money which turns consternation into 
delight and Socialist philosophy into self-interest. 

All of which does not alter the freshness of his gospel nor 
the veritability of his unique contribution to modern thought. 
As a critic he has made it possible for all who desire to do so 
to look at life in their own way, and in doing so to surround 
their egoism with a margin of sweet tolerance ; he has phil- 
osophised common-sense, and made anti-climax a popular 
literary, conversational and oratorical trick ; and he has 
gone far towards reintroducing intelligence to the British 
theatre and proving that in some circumstances an intelli- 
gent drama is a sound commercial proposition. Above all 
lie has demonstrated the dramatic possibilities of discussion, 
and by so doing linked up the literary drama with Platonic 
dialogue, and, at the same time, he has left the theatre free 
to develop at the right moment its natural emotional and 
imaginative tradition. 

If circumstances have forced Bernard Shaw to give to the 
middle classes what was meant for humanity, it is consoling 
to think that his teaching is big enough and good enough for 



ENTER -G.B.S. 203 

the latter. In the essence of things there is notliing in his 
teaching or his ideas fundamentally opposed to broad human 
needs. Rightly understood, Shaw's gospel is universal, and 
none the less so because it is eclectic and has been assimilated 
and selected by one of the most able and distinguished minds 
our nation has produced from the thought of the most 
powerful and original of modern intelligences. Schopen- 
hauer, Richard Wagner, Friedrieh Nietzsche, Henrik Ibsen 
and Samuel Butler have all contributed material to augment 
that gospel of reality which Shaw has preached with so much 
original eloquence and wit. The Eighteen Nineties were 
largely indifferent to the high and bewildering purpose of this 
teaching, although it is not easy to imagine an atmosphere 
better suited for its development either on the part of its 
creator or of his possible followers. It was reserved for the 
new century to recognise Shaw's great gifts by wide discus- 
sion and much protest, and it is certain that protest will die 
down when the ripe sanity and easy common-sense of his 
purpose is seen through the satiric diablerie of the mask he 
chooses to wear. 

No other modern writer in this country save Samuel 
Butler, and none in Europe save Tolstoy and Ibsen, have 
looked at life so frankly as Bernard Shaw. Zola, generally 
considered an arch-realist, but really a romantic, was so 
obsessed by the shibboleth of scientific accumulation of 
evidence that his vision is as blurred as that of Herbert 
Spencer ; Schopenhauer and Nietzsche both looked at life 
through the distorting glass of theory ; Ruskin and Carlyle 
saw only parts of life. But Tolstoy and Ibsen, Butler and 
Shaw possessed the facult}^ of looking at life with photo- 
graphic vision. Realists of this type are the outcome of 
that impulsion towards frankness which produced the Im- 
pressionists. Manet and Degas are their prototypes in the 
graphic arts ; and just as these artists demanded and ac- 
cepted with all its consequences the full reality and accent 
of light, so the artist-philosophers, working in the same 
spirit, allowed light absolute freedom in the realms of 
observing intellect and informing imagination. 



204 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

To look at life until you see it clearly is Bernard Shaw's 
avowed aim. His concern being with humanity and the 
fine arts, he has made it his business to see these manifesta- 
tions of life clearly and deduce his philosophy from them 
without fear of what has been said or believed or experienced. 
And although he now sets a higher value on contemplation, 
in the Nineties he knew that contemplation was not enough 
in itself. Writing of life, in 1896, he said : " Only by inter- 
course with men and women can we learn anything about it. 
This involves an active life, not a contemplative one ; for 
unless you do something in the world, you can have no real 
business to transact with men ; and unless you love and are 
loved, you can have no intimate relations with them. And 
you must transact business, wirepull politics, discuss religion, 
give and receive hate, love and friendship, with all sorts of 
people before you can acquire the sense of humanity. If you 
are to acquire the sense sufficiently to be a philosopher, you 
must do all these things unconditionally." Facing life in 
suchwise himself he has hammered out his own religion of 
art, activity and contemplation, and this religion finds a 
voice in all his work, and is summed up in many passages, 
but in none so intimately and so personally as in a passage 
in The Savoy essay, "On Going to Church " : "Any place 
where men dwell, village or city, is a reflection of the con- 
sciousness of every single man. In my consciousness there is 
a market, a garden, a dwelling, a workshop, a lovers' walk — 
above all, a cathedral. My appeal to the master-builder is ; 
Mirror this cathedral for me in enduring stone ; make it with 
hands ; let it direct its sure and clear appeal to my senses, so 
that when my spirit is vaguely groping after an elusive mood 
my eye shall be caught by the skyward tower, showing me 
where, within the cathedral, I may find my way to the 
cathedral within me." Reading these words one might have 
paused, wondering whether Shaw would always believe 
mysticism to be argument about nothing, and whether his 
work might not bridge the rationalist gap between the old 
mysticism and the new. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE HIGHER DRAMA 

" If every manager considers it due to himself to produce nothing cheaper than 
The Prisoner of Zenda, not to mention the splendours of the Lyceum, then good- 
bye to high dramatic art. The managers will, perhaps, retort that, if high 
dramatic art means Ibsen, then they ask for nothing better than to get rid of it. 
I am too polite to reply, bluntly, that higli dramatic art does mean Ibsen ; that 
Ibsen's plays are at this moment the head of the dramatic body ; and that 
though an actor manager can, and often does, do without a head, dramatic art 
cannot." — G.B.S. in The Saturday Review, 1897. 

IF it takes more than two swallows to make a summer, 
it certainly takes more than two playwrights to make 
a dramatic renaissance. That being admitted, no one 
could say that the plays of Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw 
constituted in themselves a " new " drama. Such a definite 
achievement cannot be credited to the period. But what 
can be credited to the period is the creation of an atmosphere 
in which a new drama might flourish at the appointed hour. 
This was done by the art of criticism, and chiefly by Bernard 
Shaw, William Archer and J. T. Grein, whose example and 
ideal was Ibsen. These three critics were more than con- 
vinced and ardent Ibsenists ; they were capable and tireless 
in propagation of the cause, Bernard Shaw as critic and 
philosopher, William Archer as critic and translator of the 
Master's plays, and J. T. Grein as critic, producer and 
founder of the Independent Theatre, the earliest definite 
home of the Higher Drama. And with them, but not of 
them, was A. B. Walkley, critic pure and simple, pouring oil 
upon the waters of revolt with irony and intellectual banter 
born of a capacity for taking an uncompromising middle 
attitude, and with a common-sense which amounted in itself 
to genius. 

These critics differed from their kind by an avowedly 
205 



206 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

personal approach, and they flaunted their apostasy in 
the face of those who were content to maintain the old 
theatrical methods. The appeal to personal taste might 
easily have been ignored by the upholders of convention 
had it not been made by critics of undoubted skill and 
unanswerable certainty of aim. The new critics accepted 
their own view of the state of the drama with as much 
deliberation as the old accepted the view of tradition and 
convention. They were frankly impressionist and auto- 
biographical. Walkley called his first collection of critical 
essa3^s Playhouse hnjwessions (1892), and admitted to 
adventuring among masterpieces in the approved method 
of Anatole France. The diaries of Marie Bashkirtseff were 
among the books of the hour, and he coined the verb "to 
bashkirtseff," for the purpose, emphasising a method which 
had also been defended by Oscar Wilde. Shaw was even 
more autobiographical, but prophecy, and purpose other 
than the entertainment of a moment or an hour, lurked be- 
hind his most indiscreet confession. He did not argue from 
precedent, it is true, but he sought all the more energetically 
to establish new precedents, chief among which were a drama 
of ideas and "a pit of philosophers "—and Ibsen, Ibsen, 
Ibsen, toujours Ibsen ! 

The all-or-nothing seriousness of G.B.S. is happily re- 
corded in the following passage from Walkley 's book, which 
purports to describe the author's friend, Euthyphro, but 
whose identity is otherwise obvious ; — "A universal genius, 
a brilliant political economist, a Fabian of the straitest sect 
of the Fabians, a critic (of other arts than the dramatic), 
coinme il y en a pen, he persists, Avhere the stage is concerned, 
in crying for the moon, and will not be satisfied, as the rest 
of us have learned to be, with the only attainable substitute, 
a good wholesome cheese. His standard of taste is as much 
too high as Crito's is too low. He asks from the theatre 
more than the theatre can give, and quarrels with the 
theatre because it is theatrical. He lumps La Tosca and 
A Man's Shadow together as 'French machine-made plays,' 
and, because he is not edified by them, refuses to be merely 



THE HIGHER DRAMA 207 

amused. Because The Dead Heart is not on the level of a 
Greek tragedy, he is blind to its merits as a pantomime. He 
refuses to recognise the advance made by Mr Pinero, because 
Mr Pinero has not yet advanced as far as Henrik Ibsen. 
Half a loaf, the wise agree, is better than no bread ; but be- 
cause it is only half a loaf, Euthyphro complains that they 
have given him a stone." 

More than twenty years have passed since the above words 
were written, and what A. B. Walkley imagined to be a 
demand for more than the theatre could give has actually 
produced a new drama, if not a new theatre, and the succeed- 
ing generation, in the person of Gordon Craig, is already 
making demands which even iconoclasts of the Nineties 
would have considered impossible. 

William Archer is the father of modern dramatic criticism 
in this country, and he was introducing ideas and an intelli- 
gent seriousness into this disappointing and most thankless 
branch of criticism as far back as the middle eighties, with 
such books as About the Theatre (1886) and Masks or Faces ? 
(1888). He shared the honours of being one of the earliest 
translators of Ibsen with Edniond Gosse, Eleanor Marx 
Aveling (daughter of Karl Marx), and his own brother, 
Charles Archer, who collaborated with him in several trans- 
lations now in the complete English edition.^ 

On 7th June 1889 Charles Charrington began the dramatic 
renaissance by producing A DoWs House at the Novelty 
Theatre, with Janet Achurch in the part of Nora. The play 
had been called the Hernani of the new dramatic movement 
in England, and the title has been justified to the full. An 
interest was aroused such as had not been known in artistic 
circles since the first performances of Wagner's operas, and 
the appearance of the Impressionist painters ; and it was 
increased a thousandfold by the production of Ghosts and 

1 The work of bringing together the cxjmplete edition of Ibsen in 
English WcLS begun in 1888, but long before a complete translation of 
the works had been dieamt of there was much interest in Ibsen's 
plays in this country, and Emperor and Galilean was the first of the 
plays to be translated into English, by Catherine Ray, in 1876. 



208 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

Hedda Gabler, in 1891, when the new manifestation of drama 
turned the opposition of the older critics into indignation 
and reduced their criticism to a wild display of invective 
and vituperation. It was, as William Archer said at the 
time, " probably the most obstinate and rancorous prejudice 
recorded in the history of the stage." Bernard Shaw's 
account of Clement Scott's criticism of Ghosts in The Daily 
Telegraph, and the famous leading article in the same issue 
(14th March 1891), recalls the anxiety of the older genera- 
tion when confronted with this frank drama. The leading 
article, he wrote, compared the play to an open drain, a 
loathsome sore unbandaged, a dirty act done publicly, or a 
lazar-house with all its doors and windows open. Bestial, 
cynical, disgusting, poisonous, sickly, delirious, indecent, 
loathsome, fetid, literary carrion, crapulous stuff, clinical 
confessions : all these epithets were used in the article as 
descriptions of Ibsen's work. One passage in the same 
leader said ; " Realism is one thing ; but the nostrils of 
the audience must not be visibly held before a play can 
be stamped as true to nature. It is difficult to expose in 
decorous words," the writer continued, "the gross and 
almost putrid indecorum of this play." And as more than 
one critic called upon the law to protect the players 
against such dramas, some idea may be formed of the 
righteous indignation aroused at the inception of the 
new drama. 

After the first experiment with A DolVs House, Charles 
Charrington took his company on a world tour, and Janet 
Achurch played the part of Nora over one hundred and fifty 
times in Australia, New Zealand, India and Egypt. This 
tour took something like three years, and when the pioneers 
retm'ned to London they found Ibsen engaging the interest 
of all the more thoughtful playgoers. A DolVs House was 
therefore revived at the Avenue Theatre (now the Play- 
house) on 19th April 1892, and the same year saw the first 
stage performance of plays by Oscar Wilde and Bernard 
Shaw. The following year, however, was more memorable 
in the dramatic renaissance, for it saw the production of no 



THE HIGHER DRAMA 209 

less than six plays by Ibsen — The Master Builder, Rosmers- 
holm, Hedda Gabler, Brand (Foui'th Act), An Enemy of the 
People, and A DolVs House, and the Independent Theatre 
produced five modern plays, one adaptation and one trans- 
lation, and, more important still, three by modern British 
playwrights : The Strike at Arlingford, by George IMoore 
(his first play). The Black Cat, by John Todhunter, and 
A Question of Memory, by "Michael Field." Besides these 
came The Second Mrs Tanqiieray, by Pinero, A Woman of No 
Importance, by Oscar Wilde, and The Bauble Shop, by Henry 
Arthm- Jones, all of which were in the modern movement 
and contributing to the newly awakened intelligent interest 
in the theatre. 

The appetite for a new drama thus created might have en- 
couraged managers and propagandist promoters to venture 
further afield, but it did nothing of the sort. After 1893, 
and for practically seven years, there was very little en- 
couragement for those who stood for the higher drama. It 
is true that plays by advanced foreigners as important as 
Bjornson Bjornstjerne, Mam-ice Maeterlinck, Sudermann and 
Echegaray, and a number of classical dramas managed to 
get produced ; but Bernard Shaw could find only occasional 
chances of production for his own plays, and the younger 
school, since evolved out of his teaching and criticism, was 
not yet born. The new drama was in the main an occasional 
affair, highly experimental, and appealing only to a small 
and seriously minded group of "intellectuals " in London. 
They very largely belonged to the literary fringe of the 
Fabian Society and other reform and revolutionary organ- 
isations, and these were practically the sole supporters of 
the efforts of the Independent Theatre, the Stage Society 
and the New Century Theatre. 

Such a poor result from early efforts towards a new drama 
ought not to have been, and, in fact, was not, unexpected. 
The new movement was so radical in its demands that it 
had first to create conditions in which it could exist. Every- 
thing was against rapid progress. It was not a mere ques- 
tion of art, dramatic or theatrical ; it was a question also of 
o 



210 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

economics, of professional interests, and of theatrical habit 
and public indifference to anything that did not entertain by 
laughter or tears. The new drama already existed on the 
Continent in the plays of Ibsen, Hauptmann, Maeterlinck, 
Sudermann, Strindberg and others ; and both theatres and 
audiences were coming into existence in support of it. 
But here, save for Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde, we pos- 
sessed no native plays at all comparable with these foreign 
ones, and until there was a certainty of such plays being pro- 
duced few authors could be expected to go on writing them. 
For that reason the new movement was forced to be mainly 
critical. Its chief material objects of attack were the 
dominance of the actor manager and his demand for plays 
written around himself, and the general theatrical custom of 
seeking only plays that promised a " long run." These two 
conditions stood in the way of a new drama because the 
modern drama, being impressionist and realist, did not see 
life as an episode dominated by an attractive personality 
more or less resembling some popular actor manager ; it 
only offered such eminence by accident, as in the case of 
Dr Stockmann in An Enemy of the People, which was pro- 
duced with considerable popular success, and the minimum 
of Ibsenism, by Beerbohm Tree, in 1893. And, secondly, 
the only chance of promoting variety of plays of the new 
type, actors in sufficient numbers to perform them, and 
audiences of sufficient intelligence and sufficient interest to 
maintain them, was by a return to the repertory system. 
Abnormal rents for theatres, abnormal salaries for principal 
actors, and the absence of small and convenient theatres 
were also among the first obstacles to the realisation of these 
ambitions. 

But these were not all the seemingly insurmountable diffi- 
culties ; the greatest stumbling block was the creation of an 
audience large enough to make the newer plays a financial 
possibility. This was no easy matter. At no time are 
there many people in this or perhaps any country who can 
be relied upon to show much enthusiasm for ideas and 
psychological and social problems, especially in a theatre 



THE HIGHER DRAMA 211 

which has for generations been looked upon as a place of 
idle amusement. The advocates of the higher drama were 
serious and purposeful persons. With the exception of 
Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde, there was no laughter 
in them. They and their followers could laugh, but they 
preferred the mental smile. Their demand was for dramatic 
literature : dramas which represented a personal point of 
view, expressed in impressionistic terms revealing the play 
of temperament in conflict with convention, and will in 
conflict with circumstance, and always indicating by implica- 
tion the ideas underlying the theme. Such plays were not 
only to be playable ; they were to be readable as well — they 
were to combine the good stage play and the good book. As 
we know, the higher dramatic movement did produce plays 
answering these demands. But it was not always so easy 
to reveal the idea behind the play. Bernard Shaw had to 
write The Quintessence of Ibsenism to show what Ibsen's 
plays meant, and long prefaces and appendices to show what 
his own plays meant. Endless were the discussions as to the 
meaning of The Master Builder (Israel Zangwill called it 
"The Master Bewilderer ") ; and intellectuals of all kinds 
yearned for the prefaces Ibsen might have written but didn't. 
But the old Norwegian dramatist let them yearn. With the 
plays of Shaw the higher drama became a drama of dis- 
cussion. It was realistic only incidentally ; in inception it 
was problematic, and in effect argumentative, without any 
definite conclusion. Ideas were generally left very much in 
the air until the play was printed, when the author told you 
all about his aims in a long, idea-laden and entertaining 
preface. This argumentative tendency developed in his art 
until the action of his later plays became entirely conversa- 
tional ; and to prevent any illusions as to his intentions he 
called these plays discussions. 

Out of the discussion of plays and ideas the new drama 
ultimately came. Translations of good foreign plays began 
to appear frequently, and they were read by a select but 
ever-growing public. Interest also was aroused in the older 
dramatists, and both Henry Irving and Beerbohm Tree drew 



212 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

large audiences to their highly decorated revivals of Shake- 
speare ; a still more genuine enthusiasm was created by the 
excellent Shakespearean Repertoire Company of F. R. Ben- 
son, in the provinces. But with all this activity the main 
line of the modernist advance was diverted by a character- 
istic compromise on the part of the public. Ibsen did not 
pay ; but it was felt that realism in a modern setting, if the 
themes in themselves were likeable and capable of a senti- 
mental response, might be popular. Obviously, the game 
would be to hearten realism with a dash of sentimentalism ; 
in short, to water down Ibsen ; not to declare that "it is 
right to do something hitherto regarded as infamous " {vide 
G.B.S.), but to treat seriously, in a play with no specific 
purpose, something hitherto considered as naughty and 
therefore only deserving of facetious comment, and to call 
it a "problem play." And if you could provoke a tear at 
the naughtiness out of which a Labiche would have raised a 
laugh, so much the better — you would be both modern and 
popular. 

This actually happened. Oscar Wilde did it with A 
Woman of No Importance ; Henry Arthur Jones did it with 
2'he Case of Rebellious Susan, and Arthur Wing Pinero did it 
with The Second Mrs Tanqueray. It is not to be doubted 
that these play^vrights were pioneers of the new movement, 
but it should not be forgotten that they were pioneers by 
compromise. Henry Arthur Jones was an upholder of real- 
ism, but his plays of this time do not approximate to the 
realism of Ibsen or Tolstoy or Strindberg ; they are realistic 
only in so far as realism is consistent with the conviction that 
the artist is an interpreter of dreams, a translator of real life 
into imaginative concepts. Quite seriously, logically and 
successfully, Wilde, Pinero and Jones worked along these 
lines, and by so doing placed themselves in the direct tradi- 
tion of the established drama, upon which they succeeded in 
doing little more than graft some new branches. Now Ibsen 
possessed only the most elementary connection with tradi- 
tional drama. He was as distinct from the current trend of 
European drama that had preceded liim as Euripides was 



THE HIGHER DRAMA 213 

liom the Greek drama, as Molicre was from the French drama, 
and as Shakespeare was from the Enghsh drama, which had 
preceded them. Ibsen discovered theatrical reahty, and he 
made it so real that half the opposition to his drama was due 
to the discomfort most people experience when brought face 
to face with a new revelation of facts or ideas. Those who 
compromised achieved no such effect ; they were merely 
illusionists, using reality to further illusion, rather than 
illusion to further reality. 

Bernard Shaw was not deceived by this quasi-modernism. 
In 1895 he wrote : " The unfortunate new dramatist has 
... to write plays so extraordinarily good that, like Mozart's 
operas, they succeed in spite of inadequate execution. This 
is all very well for geniuses like Ibsen ; but it is rather hard 
on the ordinary purveyor of the drama. The managers do 
not seem to me yet to grasp this feature of the situation. If 
they did, they would only meddle with the strongest speci- 
mens of the new drama, instead of timidly going to the old 
firms and ordering moderate plays cut in the new style. No 
doubt the success of The Second Mrs Tanqueray and The 
Case of Rebellious Susan seemed to support the view that the 
new style had better be tried cautiously by an old hand. 
But then Mrs Tanqueray had not the faintest touch of the 
new spirit in it ; and recent events suggest that its success 
was due to a happy cast of the dice by which the play found 
an actress ^ who doubled its value and had hers doubled 
by it." William Archer took a more lenient view of the 
situation. He referred to the play in 1893 as "the one play 
of what may be called European merit which the modern 
English stage can yet boast," and he went on to advise 
Pinero's fellow-craftsmen to follow the lead set by The Second 
Mrs Tanqueray, because Pinero had " inserted the thin end 
of the wedge," and "I firmly believe," he said, "that not 
only the ambition but the material interests of our other 
dramatists will prompt them to follow his lead, and that, 
therefore, we are indeed on the threshold of a new epoch," 

That proved to be true. The Second Mrs Tanqueray, 
^ Mrs Patrick Campbell. 



214 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

although it was not of the " advanced movement," was 
really a part of the movement. It was the first effect on the 
EngHsli stage of the influence of Ibsen and the propagand- 
ists of the modern drama. And even its faults as a play are 
faults only in comparison with the Ibsen standard. It is a 
play possessing both intelligent idea and problem, but above 
all it possesses a masterly stage technique which alone makes^ 
it worthy to be considered with the works of great modern 
masters. There is little doubt again that the modernist 
plays of Pinero and Henry Arthur Jones, and certain produc- 
tions of R. C. Carton and Sydney Grundy, did tone up the 
moribund popular stage, and so aided the revolutionists by 
teaching the average playgoer to tune his brain to a higher 
seriousness than had hitherto been his habit. 

But the real expression of the new movement, the main 
tendency, did not find an outlet during the Nineties. That 
was not possible until the close of the decade, when, in the 
person of H. Granville Barker, the Stage Society found 
the medium for the realisation of the decade-old dreams of 
the leaders of the modern movement. Dramatist, actor and 
producer, Granville Barker was the man whom the moment 
and the movement required, and after several successes 
within the Stage Society he took a daring leap on to the 
regular stage by engaging, with C. E. Vedrenne as busi- 
ness partner, the Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square. By 
doing so he proved that the plays of Bernard Shaw had 
immense popular and, as a natural outcome, financial possi- 
bilities of success ; that it was also possible, within certain 
limits, to run a repertory theatre, and, perhaps most import- 
ant of all, that we had a growing native school of modern 
dramatists of power and distinction. This new school in- 
cluded John Galsworthy, St John Hankin, John Masefield, 
Frederick Fenn, and Granville Barker himself, whose play, 
The Voysey Inheritance, stands among the finest products of 
the dramatic renaissance. These plays have since been per- 
formed, along with others which follow in the new tradition, 
at modern repertory theatres in Glasgow, Manchester and 
Liverpool, and by touring companies appealing to just 



THE HIGHER DRAMA 215 

such audiences as the men of the Nineties desired to 
create. 

The development of the movement on the regular stage 
as patronised by the average playgoer is not so marked. 
But even here the new spirit has had its effect, for though 
melodrama, facetious comedy and musical farce still main- 
tain preposterously long "runs," showing that their place, 
as it is bound to be, is as secure as ever, it is no longer im- 
possible to find intelligent entertainment at any time of the 
year in one or another of the London theatres. The higher 
dramatic activity born in the last decade of the old century 
has lived thus far into the new, justifying the energy which 
supported its inception. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE NEW FICTION 

THE realist movement spread among novelists and 
writers of fiction with even more rapidity than it in- 
vaded the dramatic realm. With epidemic sudden- 
ness writers of all kinds began to be realistic in their fiction. 
The reading public was not unprepared for the new tendency, 
for, at about the same time, a cheap edition of the novels of 
Zola was put upon the market and devom-ed eagerly without 
anybody appearing to be more than pleasantly shocked. 
The edition was expurgated somewhat, but even then 
passages were left untouched which only a very few years 
earlier would have aroused the condemnation of the Noncon- 
formist conscience. Still, what a Frenchman might do with 
impunity did not go without question when repeated, even 
in a milder way, by native writers. There was a storm-in-a- 
tea-cup in certain circles, for instance, when Thomas Hardy 
issued Jude the Obscure, and George Moore, Esther Waters ; 
and the storm was heightened on the appearance of Grant 
Allen's Womaii Who Did, and such realistic studies of 
slum life as Arthur Morrison's Tales of Mean Streets and 
A Child of the J ago. But even this kew over when the 
newspapers considered their readers had had enough of 
the subject, and no more serious damage was done than 
a few suppressions by the autocrats of the popular lending 
libraries, notably in the cases of Jude the Obscure and 
Esther Waters, which prohibitions, as might have been 
expected, had the result of drawing more than usual atten- 
tion to these remarkable books. The matter in the end 
was not settled one way or the other ; it simply lapsed, and 
publishers and authors proceeded to develop from frankness 
to frankness without either endangering their reputations, 

216 



THE NEW FICTION 217 

their readers' morals, or, ultimately, of causing surprise or 
sustained opposition from any quarter. 

It is a curious fact, however, that, whilst the more daring 
of the realists aroused a new interest in the art of the novel, 
there were still more critics to denounce than to uphold the 
new method. Not only was this the fact with reference to 
realism, but it was the fact also with reference to the problem 
novel, what was called " the novel with a purpose," and also 
to the still more modern fiction of temperament and psycho- 
logical analysis represented by such writers as George 
Egerton and Sarah Grand. Discussions were lengthy and 
heated, and many good people of the time, looking backward 
at the large geniality and splendid sanity of Charles Dickens, 
the high moral purpose of George Eliot, and the line culture 
and unimpeachable respectability of Thackeray, had grave 
forebodings for their own times and serious doubts as to the 
wisdom of the successors of the accepted masters. They 
forgot,' of course, that the realism of Oliver Twist had been 
criticised in its day, and that there were even people who 
doubted the wisdom of Thackeray's mild frankness in Vanity 
Fair. 

What the objectors did not realise, and this was perhaps 
the most important circumstance of all, was that the new 
fiction was big enougli and attractive enough to be worth a 
fight, and that that in itself was a sign of literary health and 
vitality. Discussion is always a characteristic of renascent 
periods in art and life. "Art lives upon discussion," avows 
Henry James, "upon experiment, upon curiosity, upon 
variety of attempt, upon the exchange of views, and the com- 
parison of standpoints ; and there is a presumption that the 
times when no one has anything particular to say about it, 
and has no reason to give for practice or preference, though 
they may be times of honour, are not times of development 
— are times, possibly, even, a little of dullness." There can 
be little doubt that the times under review were times of 
creative development, and above all they were far from dull 
in any branch of art, particularly in that of the novel. 

A new impetus and a wider range of action, amoiuiting to 



218 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

u new lease of life, had been given to that literary form by 
the abolition of the old three-volume method of publieation, 
whose unwieldy size and exorbitant priee had had the effect 
of chaining the novel to the circulating libraries. Many 
authors, notably Hall Caine, worked tirelessly for the aboli- 
tion of the outmoded three-vohmie novel, and finally they 
won a victory more swiftly and more completely than their 
wildest hopes had anticipated. After a remarkably short 
fight the publishers capitulated and introduced the now 
familiar and, until quite recently, omnipresent six-shilling 
volume. The passing of the old novel format was import- 
ant because it represented a great deal more than the passing 
of a mere form of publication. Actually it was the capitula- 
tion of a type of novel : the old sentimental lending-library 
novel of polite romantic atmosphere and crudely happy 
endings ; the novel which was guaranteed to tax no brain 
by thought and to vex no code of morals by revolutionary 
suggestions, but by a determined rejection of anything 
approaching problem or idea, or even psychology, was calcu- 
lated to produce that drowsy state of mild peacefulness 
which many people believe to be the end and aim of all good 
literature. There were few to regret its demise, and even 
these were ironical in the hour of regret. Chief among them 
was Rudyard Kipling, who gave the departed three-^'olume 
novel poetical honours in some verses called ' ' The Tliree- 
Decker " : 

■' We asked no social questions — we pumped no hidden shame — 
We never talked obstetrics when the Little Stranger came : 
We left the Lord in Heaven, we left the fiends in Hell. 
We weren't exactly Yussufs, but — Zuleika didn't tell.'- 

The new fiction did all these things, and, to its credit be it 
said, it did them within the limits of the art of the novel and 
with the ultimate result of increasing the number of novel 
readers beyond all bounds. 

Some idea of the more reputable body of opinion aroused 
against the manifestation of realistic tendencies in literature 
may be gathered from an article, entitled ' ' Reticence in 



THE NEW FICTION 219 

Literature," contributed by Artliur Waugli to the first 
number of The Yellow Book. The beginnings of the new- 
frankness, particularly in its insistence upon sex, is traced 
in this article to Swinburne ; but the frankness of the modern 
novel had descended directly from the French realists. 
Arthur Waugh detected two developments of modern real- 
ism ; one towards excess promoted by effeminacy, " by tlie 
want of restraint which starts from enervated sensations " ; 
and the other towards " the excess which results from a 
certain brutal virility, which proceeds from coarse familiarity 
with indulgence." He went on to say that, "The one 
whispers, the other shouts ; the one is the language of the 
courtesan, the other of the bargee. What we miss in both 
alike," he continued, " is that true frankness which springs 
from the artistic and moral temperament ; the episodes are 
not part of a whole in unity with itself ; the impression they 
leave upon the reader is not the impression of Hogarth's 
pictures ; in one form they employ all their art to render 
vice attractive ; in the other, with absolutely no art at all, 
they merely reproduce, with the fidelity of the kodak, scenes 
and situations the existence of which we all acknow^ledge, 
while taste prefers to forget them." He then proceeded to 
stigmatise the latest development of literary frankness which 
he believed to be both inartistic and a danger to art. " A 
new school has arisen which combines the characteristics of 
effeminacy and brutality. In its effeminate aspect it plays 
with the subtler emotions of sensual pleasure, on its brutal 
side it has developed into that class of fiction which for want 
of a better word I must call chirurgical. In poetry it deals 
with very much the same passions as those which we have 
placed in the verses to which allusion has been made above ^ ; 
but, instead of leaving these refinements of lust to the haunts 
to which they are fitted, it has introduced them into the 
domestic chamber, and permeated marriage with the ardours 
of promiscuous intercourse. ' In fiction it affects its heroines 
with acquired diseases of names unmentionable, and has de- 
based the beauty of maternity by analysis of the process of 
^ "Dolores," by Algernon Charles Swinburne. 



220 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

gestation. Surely the inartistic temperament can scarcely 
abuse literature fm'tlier. I own I can conceive nothing less 
beautiful." Tennyson was quoted in a familiar couplet to 
buttress this argument, and the critic concluded by advocat- 
ing reticence and humility in art as being the most necessary 
equipment for the production of beauty and the achievement 
of immortality. 

The line of defence taken by the upholders of frankness in 
literature began by repudiating any precise desire for either 
immortality, beauty or even morality. The modernist was 
not only frank, he was frankly amoral ; his one concern was 
to get into his work the quality of life, the sense of reality, 
irrespective of the presence or absence of moral ideas, leaving 
beauty and immortality to chance. At that period there 
w^as no very particular denial of the idea or necessity of 
beauty, as there is among the more " advanced " artists of 
to-day, nor did the writers of the time repudiate immortality. 
Immortality, they implied, should, like Whistler's idea of 
art, happen, but as to beauty, they were convinced that 
what they did sincerely, truthfully and realistically, would 
ultimately be considered beautiful. And Hubert Crackan- 
thorpe, in a reply to Arthur Waugh, was so convinced of the 
righteousness of the modern method in fiction that he was 
able to write : " Let oiu" artistic objector but weary the world 
sufficiently with his despair concerning the permanence of the 
cheerlessness of modern realism, and some day a man will 
arise who will give us a study of human happiness as fine, as 
vital as anything we owe to Guy de Maupassant or to Ibsen. 
That man will have accomplished the infinitely difficult, and 
in admiration and in awe shall we bow down our heads be- 
fore him." And this youthful and accomplished realist was 
arrogant enough on the one hand to admit that fiction was a 
young art " struggling desperately to reach expression, with 
no great past to guide it," and humble enough, on the other, 
to admit that it was matter for wonder, not that the new 
school stumbled into certain pitfalls, but that they did not 
fall headlong into a hundred more. 

But what may be called the artistic defence was not the 



THE NEW FICTION 221 

only bulwark against the attack of the old school. Fresh 
defences were found necessary owing to the nervousness of 
moralists who, weary of decrying the artistic value of real- 
ism, attacked it on ethical and even pathological lines. The 
new fiction, it was said, was calculated to undermine mor- 
ality not only because it was immoral, but because it was 
"morbid," "neurotic," and "diseased." Havelock Ellis de- 
fended Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure against this line of 
attack, in The Savoy ; and, in that article, he took the war 
into the enemy's camp by saying that, the more exact an 
artist's powers of observation became, the more vital and 
profound became his art as an instrument of morality. 
" The fresher and more intimate his vision of Nature, the 
more startling his picture of morals." And in defence of 
Hardy's treatment of the passionate experiences of Jude 
and Sue against the charge of neurosis, he says : " Jude and 
Sue are represented as crushed by a civilisation to which they 
were not born, and though civilisation may in some respects 
be regarded as a disease and unnatural, in others it may be 
said to bring out those finer vibrations of Nature which are 
overlaid by rough and bucolic conditions of life. The refine- 
ment of sexual sensibility with which this book largely deals 
is precisely such a vibration. To treat Jude, who wavers 
between two women, and Sue, who finds the laws of marriage 
too mighty for her lightly poised organism, as shocking 
monstrosities, reveals a curious attitude in the critics who 
have committed themselves to that view. Clearly they con- 
sider human sexual relationships to be as simple as those of 
the farmyard. They are as shocked as a farmer would be to 
find that a hen had views of her own concerning the lord of 
the harem. If, let us say, you decide that Indian Game and 
Plymouth Rock make a good cross, you put your cocks and 
hens together, and the matter is settled, and if you decide 
that a man and a woman are in love with each other, you 
marry them and the matter is likewise settled for the whole 
tenn of their natural lives. I suppose that the farmyard 
view is really the view of the ordinary wholesome-minded 
novelist — I mean of course in England — and of his ordinary 



222 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

critic. Indeed, in Europe generally, a distinguished German 
anthropologist has lately declared, sensible and experienced 
men still often exhibit a knowledge of sexual matters such as 
we might expect from a milkmaid. But assuredly the farm- 
yard view corresponds imperfectly to the facts of human life 
in our time. Such things as Jude is made of are, in our time 
at all events, life, and life is still worthy of her muse." 

And Vincent O'Sullivan, a modern of the moderns, in a 
plea which made hash of the old sentimental library novel, 
wrote : " It is more easy — if more degrading — to write a 
certain kind of novel. To take a fanciful instance, it is more 
easy to write the history of Miss Perfect ; how, upon the 
death of her parents, she comes to reside in the village, and 
lives there mildly and sedately ; and how one day, in the 
course of her walk abroad, she is noticed by the squire's lady, 
who straightway transports her to the Hall. And, of course, 
she soon becomes mighty well with the family, and the 
squire's son becomes enamoured of her. Then the clouds 
must gather : and a villain lord comes on the scene to bom- 
bard her virtue with clumsy artillery. Finding after months 
that her virtue dwells in an impregnable citadel, he turns to, 
and jibes and goads the young squire to the fighting point. 
And, presto ! there they are, hard at it with bare steel, on 
the Norman beach, of a drizzling morning ; and the squire 
who is just pressing hot upon my lord, when — it's hey ! for 
the old love and ho ! for the new — out rushes Miss Perfect 
to our great amazement, and falls between the swords down 
on the stinging sands in the sight of the toiling sea. Now I 
maintain, that a novel woven of these meagre threads, and 
set out in thi'ee volumes and a brave binding, would put up 
a good front at Mudie's ; would become, it too, after a while, 
morality packed in a box. For nowadays we seem to 
nourish our morals with the thinnest milk and water, with a 
good dose of sugar added, and not a suspicion of lemon at 
all." The need of such a plea for frank record of personal 
impression, even though it led writers to "go out in the 
black night and follow their own sullen will-o'-the-wisps, " is 
all the more remarkable because it came at a time when 



THE NEW FICTION 223 

realism had fought the good fight and was near upon 
winnhig. 

It is not necessary at this date to defend the reaUsm of the 
Nineties, for franknesses then considered shocking are now 
accepted as commonplaces of fiction. That does not mean 
that the merely silly novel of shallow romance has passed 
away ; not even the Eighteen Nineties could bring about so 
complete a revolution as that. But it does mean that, since 
the fin de siecle battle was fought between reticence and 
frankness, the bounds of literary expression have been so 
broadened as to make it possible for readers of all types, 
even those who can survive a considerable demand upon 
their thinking powers, to find fiction to suit their needs. 
The popular novel of the past, and to some extent of the 
present, ended more or less happily with the sound of 
wedding bells. The new novel very often began there. It 
was realised by the modern school of novelists that married 
life provided a whole realm of sensations and experiences 
hitherto neglected by their art or but partially exploited. 
Into tliis realm they plunged with enthusiasm, and so dis- 
tinct were the results, when put into the form of fiction, 
that readers who had been familiar with them in real life 
were so amazed with this revelation of truth that, almost in 
self-defence, they were forced to conclude that the new fiction 
was scandalous when it -was not morbid. 

But although realistic and introspective fiction was the 
chief contribution of the period to this form of literary art, 
all kinds of fiction seemed to receive an impetus, which re- 
sulted in a general improvement in style, imagination and 
thoughtfulness. The influence of Meredith, Hardy and, to 
a lesser extent, Henry James was apparent in much of the 
work of the younger writers ; whilst French fiction writers, 
such as Flaubert, Huysmans and Guy de Maupassant, were 
having a profound effect upon other imaginations. The 
realistic school produced George Moore, Hubert Crackan- 
thorpe, Arthm- Morrison, George Gissing, as more or less 
acknowledged disciples, and it influenced the birth of occa- 
sional novels from writers who were not definitely realistic, 



224 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

or specifically novelists, but who were impelled by the 
mood of the moment to produce works in key with the 
realistic mood. Among such novels may be named The 
Woman Who Did, by Grant Allen, No. o John Street, by 
Richard Whiteing, and Liza of Lambeth, by Somerset Maug- 
ham. Another important contribution to the fiction of the 
period was made by a group of women novelists who showed 
remarkable powers of psychological analysis and observa- 
tion, and in several instances the faculty of expressing that 
modern revolt of women which found a voice in Olive 
Schreiner's Story of an African Farm (1881). Among these 
writers were Sarah Grand, " George Egerton " (Mrs Golding 
Bright), '' John Oliver Hobbes " (Mrs Craigie), " Iota " 
(Mrs Mannington Caffyn), Mrs W. K. Clifford, Menie Muriel 
Dowie, Emma Frances Brooke, Beatrice Harraden and 
Elizabeth Robins. Mrs Humphry Ward must also be 
reckoned among the women novelists of the period, although 
she, as I have noted in an earlier chapter, had an estab- 
lished reputation as the author of Robert Elsmere, written in 
1888. Ec^ually characteristic of the period were the writers 
of comedy-fiction. Some of the early novels of H. G. Wells, 
such as The Wonderful Visit (1895), and The Wheels of Chance 
(1896), are in this class, as are also the witty works of John 
Oliver Hobbes, particularly The Sinner's Comedy (1892), A 
Study in Temptations (1893) and The School for Saints (1897). 
But the most characteristic writers of comedy-fiction were : 
Henry Harland, E. F. Benson, G. S. Street and Frederick 
Wedmore. 

It was during the Nineties also that the use of dialect in 
fiction delighted an ever-growing number of novel readers. 
First among writers in this manner stands J. M. Barrie, 
whose studies in Scottish life were a revelation and a delight 
to a vast number of people on both sides of the Tweed, and 
elsewhere. The first of these, Auld Licht Idylls and A Window 
in Thnmis, were published respectively in 1888 and 1889. 
Then followed The Little Minister, in 1891, and Sentimental 
Tommy and Margaret Ogilvy, in 1896. Inspired by the 
success of these works, S. R. Crockett produced many Scottish 



THE NEW FICTION 225 

studies, beginning with Tlw Stickit Minister, in 1893, and " Ian 
Maclaren " published the phenomenally successful Beside the 
Bonnie Brier Bush, in 1894. Jane Barlow did sometliing of 
the same service for Ireland in her Bogland Studies (1892) ; 
and the discovery by novelists of the value of local colour 
doubtless made for the success of Israel Zangwill's fine 
studies of Jewish life, Children of the Ghetto (1892), Ghetto 
Tragedies (1893), and The King of the Schnorrers {ISOi) ; and 
also to the same interest must be attributed the revival 
of the Cockney dialect in fiction, set to a tragic theme by 
realists like Arthm* Morrison and Somerset Maugham, but 
given a delightfully humorous turn by Barry Pain, Pett Ridge 
and Edwin Pugh. 

Romantic fiction once more became distinguished during 
the period, and in some of its finest results it owed its renais- 
sance to Science which, almost a centmy before, Keats had 
said would clip the wings of Romance. This new romance 
produced two of the most gifted of modern writers : Rudyard 
Kipling and H. G. Wells. The first of that series of scientific 
romances which has made the name of H. G. Wells famous 
throughout the world. The Time Machine, was published in 
1895, and in 1898 and 1899 he published The War of the Worlds 
and When the Sleeper Wakes. But the spirit of romance not 
only breathed life into the facts of science ; once more taking 
its cue from the realists it revivified the spii-it of adventm-e in 
the modern world. Robert Louis Stevenson had shown the 
way, and diu'ing the Nineties he was Avriting in collaboration 
with his son-in-law, Lloyd Osbourne, tales, like The Wrecker 
and The Ebb Tide, which made the old feel young again and 
the young desire to live more adventurously. But in the year 
1895 came a new master with a book called Almayer's Folly. 
He was a sailor by profession, a Pole by birth, but he wrote in 
EngUsli, a strange, strong and arresting English, and liis name 
was Joseph Conrad. In 1896 he pubhshed An Outcast of the 
Islands, and in the two succeeding years The Nigger of the 
Narcissus and Tales of Unrest. Conrad was not alone in his 
mastery of the art of turning experience into romance, for 
with him were Louis Becke, Frank T. BuUen, Morley Roberts, 



226 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

R. B. Cunninghanie Graham, Henry Setoii Merriman and 
Frank Harris, all of whom published their earliest books 
during the decade. The old romance found a new and subtle 
exponent in Maurice Hewlett, for The Forest Lovers was 
issued in 1898, Little Novels from Italy in 1899, and Richard 
Yea and Nay in 1900, whilst in such writers as Conan Doyle, 
who published The White Company in 1891, Sherlock Holmes 
in 1892, and Rodney Stone in 1896 ; Anthony Hope, who 
puljlished The Prisoner of Zenda in 1894 ; Stanley J. Wey- 
man, E. W. Hornung and Quiller Couch, popular romance 
found inspired representatives. Even the romance of 
powerful and widespread human interest rose again into dis- 
tinction with Hall Caine, whose best works, if The Deemster, 
published in 1887, be excepted, appeared during these 
extraordinarily productive years. And the name of Marie 
Corelli became still further associated with that species of 
sensationalism which she had already made her own. 

So active was the romantic spirit of the period that it did not 
scruple about using many mediums for its puipose, hitherto 
neglected. Thus ideas both spiritual and intellectual were 
pressed into its service, the former linding striking expression 
in Harold Frederic's Illumination (1896), and in the Celtic 
romances of " Fiona Macleod " ; and the latter in the book- 
ish but always charming romances of Richard Le Gallienne. 
Type of liis period, Le Gallienne infused into the old form of 
the Picaresque romance a great deal of the buoyant gaiety of 
the time as it inspired young people to prance about among 
books, ideas, conventions and dreams. In The Booh Bills of 
Narcissus (1891) he has caught tliis joyous intellectuality in 
full flight, with all its hopes and enthusiasms ; and later, 
when he, greatly daring, ventm*ed into the realm of Lam'ence 
Sterne with a new Sentimental Journey, called The Quest of ilie 
Golden Girl (1896). The result was interesting, for with deli- 
cate indelicacy he translated the emotional unrest of the hour 
into a fancifully impossible romance which futm*e generations 
will read for delight or for a truthful, though not impartial, 
picture of a certain corner of the age. In 1895 George du 
Maurier revived, in Trilby, the romance of Bohemianism as 



THE NEW FICTION 227 

discovered by Henri Murger, and Arthur Machen, in I'he Great 
God Pan (1894), took romance once more into the abode of 
terror in a manner as startling as it was elementally true. It 
is not unnatural to find that a period so bent on discovering — 
or rediscovering — romance in many things and experiences 
did not overlook the romance of childhood. This enchanted 
land had been discovered, as we know, by Lewis Carroll and 
Robert Louis Stevenson, but a new realm was explored with 
happy results by Kenneth Grahame, who with The Golden 
Age (1896) and Dream Days (1898) created a new delight 
by introducing us into a delectable kingdom whose existence 
we had only imagined. 

Last in this long gallery of writers of fiction, but none the 
less valued on that account, came the humorists. Although 
H. D. Traill M^as convinced that "The New Humour " turned 
out to be simply the Old Buffoonery " wi-it small," there was 
a New Humour which, in the amusing tales of Jerome K. 
Jerome, W. W. Jacobs, Israel Zangwill, J. M. Barrie, Pett 
Ridge and Barr}^ Pain, was as much a characteristic of the 
Nineties as the problem novel. For it certainly made a 
departm'c from tradition, although the laughter it raised was 
the same as all laughter — of Eternity rather than of Time. 
It probabl}^ differed from the old humour in that it was more 
self-conscious and less capable of laughing at itself. The 
New Humour when it was new was perhaps a little inhuman, 
and it reached its highest expression not in any of the works 
deliberately written with an eye on laughter, but in works 
like the plays of Bernard Shaw, which provoked laughter 
out of more serious business. 

The novels and stories of the period, however, did not 
revolutionise so much as extend established methods. 

It would not be easy to point to another decade in which 
English literature produced so many varieties of fiction, 
possessing the attractions of novelty or artistic distinction, 
or both. These works have at least one thing in common : 
they all represent more than ordinary ability within their 
own spheres. Some of them are now admitted to the first 
class of English fiction. And so balanced is the expression 



228 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

of the majority that they can be said to stand for many 
generations rather than for a special period. Few of these 
works are pecuHar to their period after the manner of much 
of the poetry ^\Titten in the decade. Oscar Wilde's Dorian 
Gray, Richard Le Gallienne's Quest of the Golden Girl and 
Aubrey Beardsley's Under the Hill have each of them charac- 
teristics which would have made their appearance irrelevant 
before or after the decade in which they were published, and 
so, for the same reason, have the satires upon those authors 
and their works : The Green Carnation, The Autohiogra'pluj of 
a Boy and The Quest of the Gilt- Edged Girl. But for the rest, 
novelties of thought and utterance are sufficiently balanced 
by normal vision to defy many trespassing years to come. 
In the main, the best fiction of the decade achieved that 
thoughtfulness and that freedom of expression for which 
the upholders of the higher drama were still fighting. The 
native-born realistic play had yet to come, and its arrival 
was still a matter of anticipation and conjecture. But the 
realistic novel came complete with Esther Waters and Jude 
the Obscure. 

Nothing essentially English was added to the novel as such. 
What was new was the result of outside influence. Bi^t in a 
less popular form of fiction, the short story, a mastery was 
achieved hitherto unknown in this country. So successful a 
contributor to this class of fiction as H. G. Wells has referred ^ 
to the short-story harvest of the Nineties, in comparison with 
a later decade, in the following terms : 

" The Nineties was a good and stimulating period for a 
short-story writer. Mr Kipling had made his astonishing 
advent with a series of little blue-grey books, whose covers 
opened like window-shutters to reveal the dusty sun-glare 
and blazing colours of the East ; Mr Barrie had dem(3iistrated 
what could be done in a little space through the panes of 
his Window in Tkrums. The National Observer was at the 
climax of its career of heroic insistence upon lyrical brevity 
and a vivid finish, and Mr Frank Harris was not only printing 
good short stories by other people, but wTiting still better ones 
1 The Country of the Blind and Other Stories, by H. G. Wells (1912). 



THE NEW FICTION 229 

himself in the dignified pages of The Fortnightly Revieiv. 
Longmans'' Magazine, too, represented a clientele of apprecia- 
tive short-story readers that is now scattered. Then came 
the generous opportunities of The Yellow Book, and The 
National Observer died only to give birth to The New Kevieiv. 
No short story of the slightest distinction went for long 
unrecognised. The sixpenny popular magazines had still to 
deaden down the conception of what a short story might be 
to the imaginative limitation of the common reader — and a 
maximum length of six thousand words. Short stories broke 
out everywhere. Kipling was writing short stories ; Barrie, 
Stevenson, Frank Harris ; Max Beerbohm wrote at least one 
perfect one. The Happy Hypocrite ; Henry James pursued 
his wonderful and inimitable bent ; and among other names 
that occur to me, like a mixed handful of jewels drawn from a 
bag, are George Street, Morley Roberts, George Gissing, Ella 
D'Arcy, Murray Gilchrist, E. Nesbit, Stephen Crane, Joseph 
Conrad, Edwin Pugh, Jerome K. Jerome, Kenneth Grahame, 
Arthur Morrison, Marriott Watson, George Moore, Grant 
Allen, George Egerton, Henry Harland, Pett Ridge, W. W. 
Jacobs (who alone seems inexhaustible). ... I do not think 
the present decade can produce any parallel to this list, or 
what is more remarkable, that the later achievements in this 
field of any of the survivors from that time, with the sole 
exception of Joseph Conrad, can compare with the work 
they did before 1900. It seems to me this outburst of short 
stories came not only as a phase in literary development, but 
also as a phase in the development of the individual writers 
concerned." 

In both the novel and the short story the sane tradition of 
English fiction by which a delicate balance was maintained 
between realism and romance rarely broke down. Even the 
traditional sentimentalism of the English novel was main- 
tained for those who continued to desire it. However, the 
modernists who were caught in the impulsion towards French 
realism soon saw the insufficiency of the most carefully 
observed facts unless they were clothed with the stuff of the 
imagination and the soul. What happened to George Moore 



230 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

may be taken as symbolical of the return to romance. In 
one masterpiece, Esther Waters, he gave us reality with a 
frankness hitherto unknown in this country. He wrote a 
novel in which he revealed the pilgrimage of a human being 
as a physical entity. That was very well in its way, especially 
^vhen that way was the way of a master. But when he came 
to write Evelyn Innes he wrote the epic of a soul's pilgrimage 
with all his experience as a realist ready to his hand. In 
that novel romanticism and realism met, co-ordinating 
much that was tentative and whimsical in the period in one 
finished and enduring work of art. 



CHAPTER XVII 

RUDYARD KIPLING 

IN the year 1890 people in this country were beginning 
to tell each other about, and to ask each other about, 
a young Anglo-Indian storyteller whose works were to 
be found in a series of pamplilets published by Messrs A. H. 
Wheeler & Co., of Allahabad, in "The Indian Railway 
Library." On inquiry also it was discovered that this same 
storyteller was the son of an Anglo-Indian official, and that 
he himself was engaged in the Indian Civil Service, that he 
had become the laureate of Governmental circles, and that 
his clever verses had been collected in a volume called 
Departmental Ditties. The demand to know more about this 
remarkable young man grew until it was found necessary to 
publish his stories in England. 

It was in the year 1890 that the short stories of Rudyard 
Kipling became accessible to English readers through the 
normal channels of publication. Thus came to us, bring- 
ing with them the scent and heat, the colour and passion of 
the East in all its splendours and seductiveness, the now 
world-famous series of short stories, beginning with Plain 
Tales from the Hills, in which we were introduced to the 
vitriolic Mrs Ilawksbee, and Soldiers Three, with Privates 
Stanley Ortheris, John Learoyd and the immortal Terence 
Mulvaney. These people immediately entered into our con- 
sciousness, taking their place beside the great comic figures 
of fiction, those characters whom we all know so much better 
than many people we meet in real life. Of a sudden we found 
ourselves enjoying a largess of short stories such as the 
English language had not known before. The mere recital 
of the titles of the little genius-laden volumes issued during 
that year recalls artistic experiences little short of thrilling — 
21ie Story of the Gadshys, In Black and White, Under the 
231 



232 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

Deodars, The Phantom 'Rickshaw, Wee Willie Winkie, The 
Courting of Dinah Shadd and The City of Dreadful Night. 
Then came a long story, The Light that Failed, and we realised 
that this new wi'iter had in him the making of a novelist 
as well as a great storyteller ; a promise, however, not yet 
aehieved. But none who read the Depaiimental Ditties 
could have foretold a poet, although the appearance in the 
Press of occasional verses over the name of Kipling was 
beginning to make us realise that very shortly it would be 
necessary to consider some of the new author's metrical 
work in the light of poetry ; and wl\en, in 1892, a volume 
called Barrack Room Ballads and Other Verses made its 
appearance it was as though a bombshell had biirst among 
the seats of literary judgment, and, amidst stimulating 
shouts of approval, academic criticism was faced with the 
necessity of revising its idea of poetry, and ultimately of 
making room for a new poet. 

The versatility of Rudyard Kipling did not end there. 
He proved with such books as Many Inventions (1893), The 
Jungle Book (1894), The Second Jungle Book (1895), The 
Seven Seas (1896), Captains Courageous (1897), The Day's 
Work (1898), Stalky <& Co. (1899), and a novel. The Naulahka 
(1892), written in conjunction with Wolcot Balestier, that 
he could enter into the minds of sailors and schoolboys and 
animals, besides giving something very like consciousness 
to machines, with as much lacility as he could enter into 
the minds of soldiers, Hindoos, and the members of Anglo- 
Indian Society. Nor did his surprising genius and versa- 
tility stop there, for with Kim (1901) he has given us a prose 
epic of Indian life, and with the Just-So Stories for Little 
Children (1902) he has entered into the wonder spirit of child- 
hood, just as in Puck ofPook's Hill (1906), and those remark- 
able short stories " The Brushwood Boy," " They," and the 
" Finest Story in the World," he has proved that his genius 
is equally at home in the realm of fancy and on the border- 
land of human experience. 

Everybody felt that a new force in a double sense had come 
into literature. It was a new voice, a new accent, in many 




RUDYAR]) Kll'LIXC 
/>'r ]\'illiatn Nicholson 



RUDYARD KIPLING 233 

ways a new language, and in every way forceful even to 
creating an atmosphere of physical violence. Rudyard 
Kipling was a realist with a difference. He had no ante- 
cedents. The critics found it impossible to locate him, even 
when they admitted that he had earned a definite place in 
the hierarchy of art. They felt without admitting it, and 
showed without intending it, that they were, to use that 
language of the street which Kipling turned into literature, 
up against a new game. There was over-praise and half- 
praise, as well as right-down opposition ; in short, all the 
phenomena of the arrival of undoubted genius. Even those 
in tlie vanguard of the new movement were lost when the}- 
came to consider his work, for as he had no antecedents, 
so he belonged to no definite movement, neither did he 
frequent, even when he came to live in England, the places 
where literary men congregate. 

Yet, as we can see now, he was a bigger figure in the vital 
modernist movement of the Nineties than many who were 
fonder of using labels to define their position. His was a 
definite expression of the modern movement towards the 
revaluation of ideas and life ; and, although his temperament 
was essentially conservative, his interpretation of what finally 
is a traditional view of life was so fresh and personal that 
it created the illusion of a revolution. He reasserted the 
claims of virility and actuality, and, if you like, of vulgarity 
—that underlying grossness of life which is Nature's safe- 
guard. In that respect Kipling might well be considered a 
realist. But his realism never, as in the case of the French 
realists, looked upon mere frankness as an end in itself. He 
was never a realist for realism's sake : he faced facts only 
because he recognised in them the essentials of romance. 
When he told a story it was not the outcome of any notion 
about being an artist, it was the outcome of the oldest of 
literary traditions, the desire of one man to tell another what 
he has seen, heard or experienced, and to tell it in the most 
effective way. His stories, therefore, read like the verbatim 
reports of the achievements of a gifted raconteur in club or 
smoking-room, or any other place where men swap yarns ; 



234 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

and these stories are equally masculine. They bring the 
modern elubroom into literature. 

His poems sing the song of ordinary healthy manhood in 
much the same way as folk-songs sang the life of the folk, or, 
better, as soldier songs, student songs or sailor chanties tell 
the desires, whims and gossip of men who are thrown together 
by common circumstances. You feel all the while that the 
love of the masculine life which is the keynote of The Light 
That Failed is the underlying and impelling influence of 
Kipling's attitude. Whilst Bernard Shaw was using Ibsen 
to decry the fixed ideals of " the manly man " and " the 
womanly woman," Rudyard Kipling was interpreting a new 
vision of the manly man in some of the most masculine poems 
that have ever been written, wherein every reference to 
woman bears the stamp of the oldest attitude of manliness 
towards womanliness. And in this respect Kipling was 
nearer the most modern philosophy of the time, that of 
Nietzsche, than Bernard Shaw. He was no believer in the 
equality of the sexes ; on the contrary, the pugnacious phil- 
osophy of Kipling, with its insistence upon clean health and 
a courageous and dangerous life would make men more like 
men and women more like women. 

Rudyard Kipling was undeniably a protest also against 
the artistic intellectualism of the time, with its tendency to 
enclose life in the conservatory of culture ; and he was all 
the more effective as he used his protagonists' favourite 
weapons. He knew what he thought and said what he 
thought in his own way, with as little apology to precedent 
or convention as the most ultra-realist or impressionist. 
Everything he did was impressionist, and like all the great 
figures of his period he did not scruple, when occasion served, 
to use art as a means of teaching or preaching. He used his 
art to preach a new imperialistic patriotism as deliberately as 
Bernard Shaw used art to preach socialism, or John David- 
son that gospel of philosophic science to which he devoted 
his last energies. 

As an artist, then, Kipling won his spurs at the outset by 
writing a cycle of short stories unsurpassed in our literature, 



RUDYARD KIPLING 235 

and finding their only parallel for bulk of output and high 
achievement in the stories of Guy de Maupassant. But he 
dirters from the French storyteller in that sex plays only a 
secondary part in his work. In a period whose artists were 
over-engaged with the aspects and problems of sex, it was a 
virtue to show that life had other interests than the way of a 
man with a maid ; and it was no small achievement at such 
a time to be able to write stories on other subjects which 
should prove both stimulating and interesting. It was not as 
though Rudyard Kipling were not conscious of the problem 
of sex ; he knew all about it, but he did not treat it as a 
problem, he recognised it as a mystery : an inspiration — 
and a warning. And into the poem called " The Vampire " 
he put his idea of the tragedy of sexual abandonment : 

" A fool there was and he made his prayer 
(Even as you and I !) 
To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair 
(We called her the woman who did not care) 
But the fool he called her his lady fair — 
(Even as j'^ou and I !) " 

And one cannot help feeling that Rudyard Kipling has 
finally stated, through the medium of one of his own soldiers, 
the average, and perhaps eternal, view of the sex problem, 
with all its cheerful fatalism, in " The Ladies " : 

" I've taken my fun where I've found it. 

An' now I must pay for my fun, 
For the more you 'ave known o' the others 

The less you will settle to one ; 
An' the end of it's settin' and thinldn' 

An' dreamin' Hell-fires to see ; 
So be warned by my lot (which I know you will not) 

An' learn about women from me." 

With the concluding dictum that — 

"... the Colonel's Lady an' Judy O'Grad}' 
Are sisters under their skins ! '' 

It was one of Kipling's chief distinctions to have been able 
to see and feel romance without the aid of antiquity. He 



236 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

had no patience with antiquarian romanticism, and he 
satirised those who upheld the old against the new in " The 
King," giving the laments of Cave-men and Lake-folk at the 
changes which were killing romance in their times, of the 
soldier who saw the death of romance in the substitution of 
the gun for the sword, and of the sailor who saw romance 
again disappearing when steam took the place of sails ; and 
he brings us down to our own times with the modern season 
ticket-holder repining for the old romantic days of the stage 
coach, when — 

" . . . all unseen 

Romance brought up the nine-fifteen. 

His hand was on the lever laid. 

His oil-can soothed the worrying cranks, 

His whistle waked the snowbound grade, 
His foghorn cut the reeking banks ; 

By dock and deep and mine and mill 

The Boy-god reckless laboured still ! ' ' 

And this idea of romance he wove into all his finest work. 
He took things as he found them, the men who worked at 
manly crafts like soldiering and sailoring and engine-driving 
and, later, aviation, and showed us how fearful and wonderful 
were their days, turning what had hitherto been considered 
a hundrmn modern world into an Arabian Night's Entertain- 
ment. In many a tale he has made machinery speak as 
eloquently as Tommy Atkins or Mowgli, or Toomai of the 
Elephants. He has taken us out on to the banks of New- 
foundland and shown us the hardness and joyousness of the 
cod fisheries and the way they have in the making of a man. 
And in the Jungle Books he has taken us into the wild, and 
woven a spell of romance more fascinating than the romantic 
life of men, and more natural than natural history. When 
he goes among the machines one feels that he loves them 
as his own "Stiff-necked, Glasgow beggar," the engineer 
M 'Andrews, loved them, and that the reply of the engineer 
to the passenger who had asked him, "Don't you think 
steam spoils romance at sea ? " would be Kipling's own 
reply in the same circumstances, to those who failed to see 
the romance of the modern world : 



RUDYARD KIPLING 237 

" Darned ijit ! I'd been doon that morn' to see what ailed the throws, 
ManhoHn', on my back — the cranks three inches off my nose. 
Romance ! Those first-class passengers they like it very well, 
Printed an' bound in little books ; but why don't poets tell ? 
I'm sick of all their quirks an' turns — the loves an' doves they dream. 
Lord, send a man like Robbie Burns to sing the Song o' Steam ! ''• 

Rudyard Kipling did not wait, as wc have seen, for some- 
one else to fulfil this demand of his own creating. He 
stepped into the breach himself, and if not exactly as a new 
Bm'ns singing the song of steam, as one who had vision 
enough to express that vision in a language strong to compel 
the attention of his fellow-men. 

Kipling was far from inclined to rest after discovering 
nought common on the earth. He wanted to share this dis- 
covery with his fellow-men ; and he wanted his compatriots 
to realise their obligations to an Empire which embraced so 
nmch of the good earth. Before him our poets were insular ; 
they had no consciousness of Empire, or when they had they 
associated the Empire with England. Kipling took the 
opposite attitude — he associated England with the Empire. 
" What do they know of England who only England know ? " 
he asked. And his question came at a moment when cir- 
cumstances had made a hitherto indifferent people acutely 
conscious of the world-circling colonies their race had 
founded. At the Jubilee of 1887 they had been told that 
Queen Victoria reigned over an Empire upon which the sun 
never set. The image had filled the popular imagination. 
Gladstone's failure to settle the Soudan, and his more recent 
attempt to give Ireland Home Rule, thus creating an illusion 
of Imperial dismemberment, had each contributed to the 
larger patriotism of Empire. So when Kitchener " avenged " 
the death of Gordon, and obliterated the failures of Wolseley 
in Egypt, by defeating the Mahdi at Omdurman, and re- 
taking Khartoum, slumbering Imperialism awoke with a 
strange and arrogant light in its eyes. 

The spark which eventually set the country ablaze with 
warlike patriotism was the Outlander question in the Trans- 
vaal, following the gold boom and the discovery of diamonds 



238 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

in South Africa. The great force in Cape Colony was Cecil 
Rhodes ; he had gone there in the early Seventies as a young 
man, consolidated the diamond interests in the De Beers 
Company, worked at the early organisation of the gold in- 
dustry, settled the native unrest in Matabeleland, Bechuana- 
land, Basutoland and Mashonaland, brought about unity of 
purpose between British and Dutch in the south, and founded 
the British South Africa Company, which was granted a 
royal charter in 1889, and whose vast realm is now known as 
Rhodesia. Rhodes was a man of action and a dreamer, a 
practical visionary, and from his early days in the colony 
he dreamt of a United South Africa, with railway and tele- 
graphic communication from the Cape to Cairo. In 1890 
he became Prime Minister of Cape Colony, and the events 
which followed this appointment were the final causes of 
that new patriotism of which Rudyard Kipling became the 
bard. Rhodes had been hampered in his schemes in the 
north by the national and non-progressive policy of Paul 
Kruger, President of the South African Republic, and Cape 
Town politics eventually centred around the question of 
the enfranchisement of British settlers in the Transvaal. 
Rhodes found a sympathetic supporter of his ideals in this 
country in Joseph Chamberlain, who had joined the Marquess 
of Salisbury's ministry as Secretary of State for Colonial 
Affairs in 1895. Weary of political negotiations, the resi- 
dents of Johannesburg were becoming restive, and they 
began arming themselves against Boer rule ; and a climax 
was reached when, acting upon this knowledge, on the 29th 
December in the same year, Dr Jameson, the Administrator 
of Mashonaland, invaded the Transvaal with a small body 
of troops. lie was defeated and captured, but the romantic 
side of the Jameson Raid appealed to popular sentiment and 
the new romance became the new patriotism. The sequel 
to the Raid was the Boer War (1899-1902), and the realisation 
of Cecil Rhodes' dream of a United South Africa under the 
British flag. 

Never before had this country been mixed up in a great 
issue which combined so inextricably the most sordid and 



RUDYARD KIPLING 289 

the most exalted motives. Violent partisanship rent 
asunder the British people, and the pro-Boer campaign led 
by Lloyd George ended in riots. Cecil Rhodes became an 
ogre in the eyes of the Peace Party, whose members also 
looked upon Joseph Chamberlain as the political instrument 
of the ring of cosmopolitan financiers who controlled the 
South African mining industry. Even now it is impossible 
to separate finance from patriotism in that fierce struggle. 
Two things, however, seem certain : firstly, that Cecil 
Rhodes was not wholly inspired by sordid motives, and that 
he used his own wealth as much as he used the Rand financiers 
and British politicians, as instruments towards the realisa- 
tion of an Imperial idea ; and secondly, that Rudyard 
Kipling as prophet and bard of Empire was high above all 
pettiness, and inspired by a genuine romantic passion far 
removed from that jingoism which did nothing but add the 
verb " to maftick " to our language. 

It was easier to mistake the gospel of Kipling, and the 
crowd did mistake it, because his most popular songs were 
set to a banjo melody. Before him bardic prophets had 
been content with the lyre ; but with fine insolence he re- 
jected that ancient instrument, and sought to inspire the 
most commonplace of all musical instruments with an ex- 
alted message. He saw in the banjo " the war-drum of the 
white man round the world." But not all those who heard 
and liked his tunes realised their underlying demand upon 
character. They mistook his patriotism for jingoism, and 
he was forced to pray, 

-' Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet — 
Lest we forget — lest we forget ! -' 

They waved flags when he sang of Empire — but showed 
more inclination for cricket and football than for fighting or 
empire-building : and the banjo snapped out its derision of 
"the flamielled fools at the wicket " and "the muddied oafs 
at the goal " — 

•' Given to strong delusion, wholly believing a lie. 
Ye saw that the land lay fenceless, and ye let the months go by 



240 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

Waiting some easy wonder : hoping some saving sign — 

Idle — openly idle — in the lee of the forespent Line. 

Idle — except for your boasting — and what is your boasting worth 

If ye grudge a year of service to the lordliest life on earth ? "■ 

Obviously Kipling and the man-in-the-street, who began 
to become a specially designated quantity at about this time, 
were at cross-purposes. There was an austerity about his 
demand which did not appeal to what he called " a poor little 
street-bred people." Perhaps his song was a little foreign — 
as the Empire was a little foreign ; and the masses were 
hardly prepared for his fierce Old Testament faith in a God 
of Battles and of Hosts. The people had his confident faith 
in their race. The Jews in Egypt were not more confident 
that they were the Chosen People. But our democracy did 
not want to prove their title ; they were quite content to let 
others prove it for them or to take it on faith. Kipling 
narrowed down the Imperial idea to ancient tribal propor- 
tions plus conscription and the modern ideal of efficiency in 
organisation : 

" Keep ye the Law — be swift in all obedience — 
Clear the land of evil, drive the road and bridge the ford. 

Make ye sure to each his own 

That he reap where he hath sown ; 
By the peace among Our peoples let men know we serve the Lord ! '' 

With this love of a modern and masterful people he 
associated the traditions of the race and its achievements 
in science and discovery and adventure ; and particularly in 
that restlessness which had pitted the English against nature 
and barbarism in the ends of the earth : " there's never a 
wave of all her waves but marks our English dead," he sang. 
Not alone of successful enterprise of soldier or sailor does he 
sing ; but he is fully conscious of the pioneer who makes 
tracks into the unknown without reward, favour or success ; 

the 

"... legion that never was listed, 
That carries no colour or crest. 
But split in a thousand detachments, 
Is breaking the way for the rest." 



RUDYARD KIPLING 241 

And his romanticism naturally takes under its wing the 
spirit of youth in its hunger for life ; he loves all who respond 
to the call of the Red Gods and who dare to test their naked 
souls against the rough uncivilised world : 

" Who hath smelt wood-smoke at twihght ? Who hath heard the 
birch-log burning ? 
Who is quick to read the noises of the night ? 
Let him follow with the others, for the Young Men's feet are turning 
To the camps of proved desire and known delight ! '-'■ 

Rudyard Kipling's song, whatever its immediate subject, 
is always the song of intrepid man. It is the revolt against 
book-culture and a fresh demand for the old culture of 
experience. He was not always rude in thought or form, and 
proved his power as a more conventional poet in "Sussex," 
" The Flowers," and in the most orthodox of all his poems 
he has come even nearer academic poetry in the expression 
of his own idea of human, and his own, worthiness : 

" One stone the more swings to her place 
In that dread Temple of Thy Worth- 
It is enough that through Thy grace 
I saw nought common on Thy earth. 

Take not that vision from my ken ; 

Oh, whatsoe'er may spoil or speed. 
Help me to need no aid from men 

That I may help such men as need.'- 

And it is only natural also that the poem in his own manner 
which rises nearest to what we have come to regard as poetry 
is the " L 'Envoi " to the Barrack Room Ballads, in which he 
sings of the return to the trail of " proved desire and known 
delight." But there is little doubt that Kipling's most 
original and inevitable verse is to be found in his soldier 
songs. These chanties of military life are unique, and in 
them he has transcended the art of effective dialect verse by 
turning slang into poetry. Such ballads as " Fuzzy- Wuzzy " 
and " Mandalay " are as peculiar in their way, and as separ- 
ate from the rest of English poetry, as the designs of Aubrey 
Beardsley are separate things in English pictorial art. 
Q 



242 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

Another class of verse Kipling also made his own : those 
verses into which he has put his more personal views upon 
questions of art and conduct. But in these, as well as in 
some of his more recent patriotic songs, although he has 
succeeded in achieving eloquent and vigorous expression, 
with, in addition, that piquancy which is peculiar to all his 
work, he has strayed furthest from the path of poetry. 
Sometimes he has fallen into verses which are incredibly 
lacldng even in the most ordinary characteristics of poetry ; 
and whatever one may find in such compositions as " The 
Conundrum of the Workshops," "In the Neolithic Age," 
"Cleared," or "Tomlinson," one only finds poetry by 
accident, as one finds it in prose. Still, among these are 
works wliich are their own reward, and in some of them 
their author has defended himself and his method of 
contravening the customs of polite art : 

' Here's my wisdom for your use, as I learned it where the moose 
And the reindeer roared where Paris roars to-niglit : — 
There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tiibal lays. 
And — every — single — one — of — them — is — right. ' ' 

There is perhaps more in this sweeping assertion than art 
disputants will be ready to admit. However, the selective 
processes of time would seem to be on the side of Kipling, 
who has added another admission in justification of his 
methods in a familiar set of quaint verses introducing the 
second series of Barrack Room Ballads in " The Seven Seas " : 

■' When 'Omer smote 'is bloomin' lyre. 
He'd 'eard men sing by land an' sea ; 
An' what he thought 'e might I'equire, 
-E went and took — the same as mc ! '■'• 

Rudyard Kipling has helped himself variedly at the tables 
of art and life, and it is not surprising, therefore, that he has 
produced unusual results. But strip from his output every 
weed, every unworthy production, and there will remain not 
one masterpiece, but a dozen, and in most branches of litera- 
ture — novel, short story, ballad, lyric, dialogue and descrip- 



RUDYARD KIPLIKG 243 

tive essay. And if his teaching at times seemed imneces- 
sarily blatant it possessed an undercurrent of courageous 
wisdom as far removed from blatant jingoism as jingoism is 
from the Imperial or patriotic idea. Wonder was reborn in 
him ; but it was not the wonder of childhood. It was the 
wonder of the grown man who had known and observed 
life and become illusion-proof — but wondered still and was 
thankful always : 

" For to admire an' for to see. 

For to be'old this world so wide — 
It never done no good to me. 
But I can't drop it if I tried ! " 

He can forgive all faults of passion or ambition ; but he 
has no place in his S3^stem for the characterless nonentity 
who is neither good for something nor bad for anything. He 
has revealed the type in "Tomlinson," and name and man 
have entered into our conception of life. This poet and 
visionary, who has helped by his song to weld a world-ring 
of colonies into an Empire, came into the Nineties telling 
people to have done with the gods of printed books and life 
by proxy — in short, to have done with anything in the nature 
of that Tomlinson who was not good enough for Heaven or 
bad enough for Hell, and who was finally rejected by the 
devil and sent back to earth with the admonition : 

" Go back to Earth with a lip unsealed— go back with an open eye. 
And carry my word to the Sons of Men or ever ye come to die : 
That the sin they do by two and two they must pay for one by 

one — 
And . . . the God that you took from a printed book be with you, 

Tomlinson ! " 



CHAPTER XVIII 



ART AND LIFE 



IN an earlier chapter I have pointed out that the art 
movements of the period took in the main two more 
or less diverse paths, paths which may be differentiated 
as the scientific and the traditional. The first aimed at 
reality of statement based upon close observation of life, 
the second depended upon the recapture of past tendencies 
in art and their definite association with the life of the day. 
The former was an exotic growth, having its antecedents in 
the work of the French Impressionists in painting, and the 
Realists and Symbolists in literature. The second was 
native, going back to the Middle Ages when art was definitely 
allied with utility. The former had for its outcome the 
development of the Fine Arts, and the latter that of what 
are known as the Applied Arts. In the preceding decade 
the Applied Art movement had the misfortune of becoming 
implicated in the aesthetic propaganda of Oscar Wilde, and 
although its underlying principles were as sound then as they 
are now, it suffered in repute when accumulated ridicule 
finally drove out the aesthetes. The movement sprang 
directly from the teaching of John Ruskin and it received 
considerable impetus from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. 
It is doubtful, however, w^hether the enthusiasm of a group 
of artists and enthusiasts for good craftsmanship would have 
developed into anything approaching the proportions of a 
national movement had it not been for the practical genius 
of William Morris. He gave a fresh turn to the teaching of 
Ruskin, demonstrating in things real what was at the time 
little more than a pious opinion in peril of being lost in the 
rhetoric of an impressive prose. 

For years a battle had been fought between the Impres- 

244 




•AGARIA>ID'F0RM7VY'DAY189^ 

' OtBlC ATLD TO THL WOKKCRS BY WALTLK- CIVAnE ' 



ART AND LIFE 245 

sionists and the Traditionalists, and the long series of wordy 
engagements had culminated in the Law Courts when 
Whistler brought his famous action against Ruskin. The 
result was a Pyrrhic victory for Whistler. This did little 
more than throw the contending parties into more definitely 
hostile camps without giving any hope of ultimate peace. 
William Morris, naturally on the side of Ruskin, did not 
make Ruskin's mistake of under- estimating or decrjdng 
the realistic movement. Being a craftsman himself, and 
knowing good craftsmanship when he saw it, he realised that 
the Impressionists were sincere artists, equally with himself ; 
though, from his point of view, wrong-headed ; and, after 
granting so much, he was content with stating his differences. 
" Now it seems to me," he said, in the preface to Arts and 
Crafts Essays (1893), "that this impulse in men of certain 
minds and moods towards certain forms of art, this genuine 
eclecticism, is all that we can expect under modern civilisa- 
tion ; that we can expect no general impulse towards the 
fine arts till civilisation has been transformed into some other 
condition of life, the details of which we cannot foresee. Let 
us then make the best of it, and admit that those who practise 
art must nowadays be conscious of that practice ; conscious 
I mean that they are either adding a certain amount of 
artistic beauty and interest to a piece of goods which would, 
if produced in the ordinary way, have no beauty or artistic 
interest, or that they are producing something which has no 
other reason for existence than its beauty and artistic interest. 
But having made the admission let us accept the consequence 
of it, and understand that it is our business as artists, since 
we desire to produce works of art, to supply the lack of 
tradition by diligently cultivating in ourselves the sense of 
beauty {pace the Impressionists), skill of hand and niceness 
of observation, without which only a makeshift of art can be 
got ; and also, so far as we can, to call the attention of the 
public to the fact that there are a few persons who are doing 
this, and even earning a livelihood by so doing, and that 
therefore, in spite of the destructive tradition of our immedi- 
ate past, in spite of the great revolution in the production of 



246 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

wares, which this century only has seen on the road to com- 
pletion, and which on the face of it, and perhaps essentially, 
is hostile to art, in spite of all difficulties which the evolution 
of the later days of society has thrown in the way of that side 
of human pleasure which is called art, there is still a minority 
with a good deal of life in it which is not content with what 
is called utilitarianism, which, being interpreted, means the 
reckless waste of life in the pursuit of the means of life." 
Morris himself endeavoured to put his theories into practice 
in a variety of ways, and finally by the control of his own 
workshops at Merton Abbey and the sale of his goods at the 
historic shop in Oxford Street. 

The idea of bringing together art and craft possessed Morris 
throughout his life, but it is a curious fact in the history of 
the Arts and Crafts movement that he neither initiated the 
idea of the handicraft workshop, of which he became pro- 
prietor, nor the Arts and Crafts Society, of which he became 
chief figure. The former was suggested in the first instance 
by Ford Madox Brown, and the latter Avas a chance result of 
an abortive revolt on the part of a number of young artists, 
chiefly members of the new English Art Club, against the 
methods of the Hanging Committee of the Royal Academy 
Exhibition. This rising occurred in 1886, and, upon its 
proving ineffective, the craftsmen and decorative artists who 
had thrown in their lot with the revolutionaries were led by 
Walter Crane into a new camp, which two years later became 
the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society. This was the first 
organisation to give general publicity to the aims of a move- 
ment which had received the benediction of the craftsmen 
who founded the Art Workers' Guild in 1884. William 
Morris was one of the earliest members of the Guild, and 
he eventually became a Guild Master. No one denies the 
supremacy of his influence in the handicrafts movement ; 
just as he never denied, in fact was always ready to admit, 
the influence of Ruskin on his own work and ideas. In 1892 
he wrote a preface to a popular reprint of the chapter from 
The Stones of Venice, called " The Nature of Gothic," in the 
course of which he said that he believed that chapter to be 



ART AND LIFE 247 

one of the most important things written by Ruskin, and 
that in future days it would be considered " as one of the 
very few necessary and inevitable utterances of the century." 
And in the same preface he upheld Ruskin's teaching that 
art was the expression of man's joy in his work, and laid it 
down as a fervent conviction that " the hallowing of labour 
by art " was the one aim for artists and craftsmen of the 
time. More than any other man of his day he lived for that 
purpose and devoted to it an energy and a variety of gifts 
without equal since the days of the Italian Renaissance. 

In the Eighteen Nineties there were those, even as there 
are to-day, who persisted in looking upon this unique crafts- 
man as a poet and belles lettrist, and upon his craftsmanship 
and his Socialism as the whims of an otherwise responsible 
genius. The writing of poetry was, of course, one of the 
many arts in which he was a master. Yet he never placed 
himself on a poetical pedestal, and he had no high opinion 
of those who made poetry the sole business of a lifetime. 
Poetry was only one of the many incidents in his extraordin- 
arily varied career. He not only practised many crafts, but 
so wide was his vision, and so tremendous his store of energy, 
that he would practise several crafts, including the writing 
of poetry, literally at one and the same time. Those who 
worked with him remember how he could work at a design, 
a poem, an essay and a piece of tapestry, and produce good 
work in each during, say, the course of a single morning. 
First he might be working at his loom, and all the while he 
would be miunbling to himself, and humming aloud as if he 
were trying a tune over in his head and testing it by sound ; 
then he would jump up from the loom, sit down at a table, 
and scribble very rapidly the verse of a poem ; immediatel}' 
afterwards he would add something to the manuscript of an 
essay that would probably be delivered as a lecture, retm-ning 
anon to his loom to throw the shuttle for a while, before 
taking up an unfinished design for printed fabrics, stained 
glass or book decoration. 

In the midst of this apparently scattered activity Morris 
not only finished a great amount of work, but he knew 



248 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

precisely what he was doing and had constantly before his 
mind the ideal towards which he aimed. " The aim of art," 
he said, " is to increase the happiness of men by giving them 
beauty and interest in incident to amuse their leisure, and 
prevent their wearying even of rest, and by giving them hope 
and bodily pleasure in their work ; or, shortly, to make man's 
work happy and his rest fruitful." He himself rested only 
when he went to bed. Somebody once criticised the discom- 
fort of a chair he had designed, and the reply of William 
Morris was : "If you want to be comfortable, go to bed." 
That explains the man. He loved his work ; every expres- 
sion of energy in the whole of that busy life was an expression 
of joy. He knew that what he was doing was art, but he 
made no more fuss about it than he fussed about his poetry ; 
because he knew also that what he was doing was useful 
work. 

William Morris had the imagination to see life in the form 
of design and the skill to express this sense of design in the 
materials of his art. That is the keynote of his genius and 
of his teaching. You can best understand his poetry, his 
romances, his stained glass and tapestries and chintzes, the 
books of the Kelmscott Press, as well as his Socialism, by an 
appeal to design — not an appeal merely to the technical 
relationship of lines and spaces and colours in patterns, or of 
rhymes and rhythms in a poem, but design as the relation- 
ship of idea and action, the relationship of art and purpose. 
William Morris always had at the back of his mind the dream 
of a Perfect State. Always busy in the visible world, he was 
still busier in the Utopia of his fancy. The beautiful things 
he made were imported to this world from that Utopia, and 
their very importation was an act of propaganda. They 
were the real News from Nowhere. And he did not bring 
them here to make lovers of the fine arts content with modern 
civilisation ; he brought them here deliberately to lure the 
people of his day from their ugly surroundings into the better 
land of his dreams. Everything he created was a lure to 
Utopia, an invitation to follow him into a new world. 

He remarked once in a lecture : "I must remind you, 



ART AND LIFE 249 

though I, and better men than I, have said it over and over 
again, that onee every man that made anything made it a 
work of art besides a useful piece of goods, whereas now only 
a very few things have even the most distant claims to be 
considered works of art. I beg you to consider that most 
carefully and seriously, and to try to think what it means. 
But first, lest any of you doubt it, let me ask you what forms 
the great mass of the objects that fill our museums, setting 
aside positive lectures and sculpture ? Is it not just the 
common household goods that pass time ? True it is that 
some people may look upon them simply as curiosities, but 
you and I have been taught most properly to look upon them 
as priceless treasures that can teach us all sorts of things, 
and yet, I repeat, they are for the most part common house- 
hold goods wrought by common fellows, as people say now, 
without any cultivation, men who thought the sun went 
roimd the earth and that Jerusalem was exactly in the middle 
of the world." William Morris was not defending museums, 
he was advocating conditions that would make it possible 
for the common people of to-day to create after their own 
manner beautiful, useful things, just as the common people 
of other times created such things after their manner. Such 
treasures were for him incentives to good artistic conduct, 
which for him again was nothing less than good citizenship. 
Good craftsmanship as understood by William Morris and 
his fellow-craftsmen, although they talked much of beauty, 
was in the main a demand for quality in material, execution 
and taste allied with the idea of a change in social life, as 
without that these three things would be impossible. The 
main tendency of the handicraft revival was therefore social 
when it was not actually Socialist. It was rarely individual 
and private after the manner of the old fine arts and the new. 
"The decline of art," wrote Walter Crane, "corresponds 
with its conversion into portable forms of private property, 
or material or commercial speculation. Its aims under such 
conditions become entirely different. All really great works 
of art are public works — ^monumental, collective, generic — 
expressing the ideas of a race, a community, a united people ; 



250 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

not the ideas of a class." It was inevitable that the ideas 
of John Ruskin should have been exploited to the full in 
a movement which sought thus to bring about the com- 
munalisation of art. But these ideas were not the only in- 
fluence. The prose works of Richard Wagner were printed 
during the decade, and his doctrine of a folk-art had a sure 
though less definite effect in many quarters, more especially 
among those who, with Mary Neal, revived the almost lost 
art of folk-dance and singing games which became so im- 
portant a feature of the Esperance Girls' Club and Social 
Settlement, founded by her with Emmeline Pethick Lawrence 
in 1895. At the same time the folk- art revival was being 
strengthened by the researches into folk-song of Broadwood, 
Baring-Gould, Frank Kidson and Cecil Sharp. The appear- 
ance also of Aylmer Maude's translation of Tolstoy's What is 
Art? in 1899 aroused heated discussions and a wide interest 
among art reformers. All prominent craftsmen agreed with 
the Wagnerian conception of the artistic as distinct from the 
financial community, and they looked forward to the time 
when, in Wagner's own words, " art . . . would become the 
herald and standard of all futm-e communal institutions." 
And it was easy for those who held this faith to sympathise 
with Tolstoy's onslaught upon decadence, and to accept the 
Tolstoyan pronouncement that, "Art is not, as the meta- 
physicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious Idea of 
beauty, or God ; it is not, as the £esthetical physiologists 
say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up 
energy ; it is not the expression of man's emotions by external 
signs ; it is not the production of pleasing objects ; and, 
above all, it is not pleasure ; but it is a means of union 
among men, joining them together in the same feeling, and 
indispensable for the life and progress towards well-being 
of individuals and of humanity." It will be seen, then, that 
the two paths of the modern art movement resolved them- 
selves into two very definite and very different aims : the 
communal and the individual, the public and the private. 

But whatever theories about art dominated the intelligence 
of the members of the Arts and Crafts movement, one tiling 



ART AND LIFE 251 

s certain, their activities produced a notable effect upon 
taste in all matters relating to architecture and the decorative 
and useful arts, and permeated more particularly the taste 
of the middle classes in Great Britain, spreading from them 
to Europe and America. To a large extent propaganda 
was carried on by example rather than by precept, and this 
was made possible by the existence of so many craftsmen 
of ability and repute. William Morris himself might have 
made any movement by his capacity for mastering whatever 
art or craft appealed to him, and he was known throughout 
the world for his skill as a designer, weaver, dyer and printer. 
But all branches of craftsmanship had their masters. These 
included Walter Crane, designer, painter and illustrator ; 
Emery Walker, printer ; T. J. Cobden-Sanderson, and his 
pupil, Douglas Cockerell, bookbinders ; William de Morgan, 
tilemaker ; May Morris, embroiderer ; Henry Wilson, 
W. A. S. Benson and Edmund Spencer, metal-workers ; 
Stephen Webb, wood-carver ; and, perhaps most important 
of all, the group of architects led by Norman Shaw, and in- 
cluding T. G. Jackson, Reginald Blomlield, W. R. Lethaby, 
G. F. Bodley, Basil Champneys, Bailey Scott and C. F. A. 
Voysey, who together revolutionised our ideas of domestic, 
and opened the way to a new era in public, architecture. 
Many of these art workers were recognised masters in the 
preceding decade, and one or two even before that, but it 
remained for the Nineties to give their work a wider and 
more general acceptance. 

The outward effect of this search for excellence of quality 
and utility in art was, however, not so profound as it might 
have been. This is explained by the fact that the conditions 
under which Morris and his group worked were so far re- 
moved from the conditions of the average economic and in- 
dustrial life of the time as to appear impractical for general 
adoption. They demonstrated, it is true, that it was possible 
to produce useful articles of fine quality and good taste even 
in an age of debased industry, and scamped and counterfeit 
workmanship ; but their demonstration proved also that 
unless something like a revolution happened among wage- 



252 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

earners none but those of ample worldly means could hope 
to become possessed of the results of such craftsmanship. 
The Arts and Crafts movement was thus checked in its 
most highly organised and enthusiastic period by the habit 
and necessity of cheapness. It was found possible to educate 
taste, for even modern commerce had not succeeded in kill- 
ing the fundamental love of excellence in commodities, but 
as quickly as taste was improved by exhibitions of modern 
craftsmanship, commerce stepped in supplying those who 
could not afford the necessarily expensive results with cheap 
imitations. The ogre of shoddy stood across the path of 
quality, and many who were set upon the high trail of ex- 
cellence by the Arts and Crafts movement ended as devotees 
of fumed oak furniture, and what began as a great move- 
ment was in danger of ending as an empty fashion with the 
word " artistic " for shibboleth. 

Such negative results did not imply complete failure. The 
Arts and Crafts movement never expected immediate 
victory, far less would it have been capable of the illusion 
that passing fashion and victory were one and the same 
thing. They were doing pioneer work, propaganda by 
demonstration, and even if all craftsmen were not convinced 
of the impossibility of making such work the rule rather 
than the exception in a commercial community, they learnt 
their lesson very soon, and readily admitted and advocated 
some other than the prevailing financial standard of pro- 
duction. Still, the work of the craftsmen named represents 
so high an achievement that we have to go back many years 
before we can find anything in this country to equal it, and 
although the Arts and Crafts as an organised movement is 
not so apparent to-day, the tradition of good craftsmanship 
has been recaptured and its upholders will not readily let it 
be lost again. 

To have accomplished so much is no little achievement, 
but perhaps a more important contribution to the vitality 
of the period was the recognition and the interpretation of 
the organic relationship between the separate arts and archi- 
tecture and between architecture and the building of towns. 



ART AND LIFE 253 

The immediate function of art as understood by the Arts and 
Crafts movement was stated by T. J. Cobden-Sanderson in 
a lecture at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition in 1896 as the 
power of doing things in the spirit of an artist and in refer- 
ence to the whole of life. "Art implies a certain lofty en- 
vironment," he said, "and is itself an adjustment to that 
environment, of all that can be done by mankind within it. 
Art as a great function of human imagination is not the 
creation of isolated objects of beauty, though isolated objects 
of beauty may indeed be created by Art, and in themselves 
resume all that is beautiful, orderly, restful and stable in the 
artist's conception of that environment. Still less is it, what 
some may seem to imagine, the objects of beauty themselves. 
It is something — it is micch — ^more. Art is, or should be, 
alive, alive and a universal stimulus. It is that spirit of 
order and seemliness, of dignity and subhmity, which, acting 
in unison with the great perception of natural forces in their 
own orderly evolution, tends to make out of the chaos of 
egotistic passions a great power of disinterested social 
action." And in a lecture on "Beautiful Cities," delivered 
at the same exhibition, W. R. Lethaby took the idea further 
and gave it a more practical turn : "Art is not the pride of 
the eye and the purse, it is a link with the child-spirit and 
the child-ages of the world. The Greek drama grew up out 
of the village dance ; the Greek theatre was developed from 
the stone-paved circles where the dances took place. If we 
gather the children who now dance at the street corners into 
some better dancing-ground, might we not hope for a new 
music, a new drama, and a new architecture ? Unless there 
is a ground of beauty, vain it is to expect the fruit of beauty. 
Failing the spirit of Art, it is futile to attempt to leaven this 
huge mass of ' man styes ' by erecting specimens of archi- 
tect's architecture, and dumping down statues of people in 
cocked hats. We should begin on the humblest plane by 
sweeping the streets better, washing and whitewashing the 
houses, and taking care that such railings and lamp-posts 
as are required are good lamp-posts and railings, the work 
of the best artists attainable." By linking up art with the 



254 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

city and with common things the Arts and Crafts movement 
completed the sequence of its ideas, and if it has not as yet 
succeeded in creating a new Jerusalem, it has indicated a 
way by pointing out the path for the Town Planning activities 
of a later date. Many craftsmen-visionaries saw afar off the 
Promised Land. William Morris set his own vision down in 
the magical prose oi News from Nowhere (1891), and there is 
little doubt that his vision and their craftsmanship helped 
the ideas of Ebenezer Howard as expressed in Garden Cities 
of To-morrow to such practical manifestations as they have 
received at Letchworth and Golders Green. 

The weakness of the Arts and Crafts movement was a 
weakness of circumstance rather than ability. Its members 
did pioneer work, and one of the first tasks was to step back 
into the past towards fine standards and sound traditions of 
workmanship before stepping forward into the future with 
their records and examples, or even, indeed, lauding them in 
the present. Thus their work, excellent though it is, looks 
and is archaic. The best craftsmanship of the Eighteen 
Nineties was outmoded at birth — " born out of its due time." 
It was sound in workmanship, excellent in design ; at its best, 
beautiful ; but in the main it was 'prentice work, a lesson 
rather than an achievement. It bore the stigmata of unrest 
and yearning instead of the easy gladness of confident and 
inevitable expression which was at once true to its moment 
and fit for its purpose. 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE REVIVAL OF PRINTING 

THE revival of the art of printing began when Messrs 
Charles Whittingham revived Caslon's famous 
founts at the Chiswick Press in 1844. The first 
volume of the revival was the Diary of Lady Willoughby, 
printed for Messrs Longmans. Before that date, and for a 
period covering something like a century and a half, a pro- 
cess of degeneration had been at work in the craft of book- 
making, which, towards the close of the eighteenth century, 
had reached a degree of positive ugliness as supreme in its 
own way as the positive beauty of the books by the great 
presses of the past. This is all the more remarkable w^hcn 
it is remembered that the materials with which the revival 
was begun existed so far back as the year 1720, when Caslon 
set up his type foundry in London and commenced casting 
those " old-faced " alphabets which had been drawn from 
the seventeenth-century Elzevirs and Plantins. 

But although the revival of printing began so far back as 
1844 with the work of the Chiswick Press, the revival of the 
personal note in printing did not come about until a half- 
centmy later, when, dm-ing the Eighteen Nineties, suddenly, 
with few obvious preliminaries, we found ourselves in the 
midst of the Golden Age of what may be termed subjective 
printing. The revival appeared to be extemporaneous, 
but, like all such occmTences, it was founded on a succes- 
sion of real if imperceptible circumstances, not least of which 
were the existence of ugliness and lack of individuality which 
sooner or later will, in any age in which it occurs, provoke 
the finer and more impressionable minds to protest. The 
protest in this instance took, in the productions of the Vale, 
Kelmscott, Eragny, Essex House, and Doves presses, a 

255 



256 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

creative and positive form, as natural as the foliation and 
fruition of plants. The tastes of such men as William Morris, 
Emery Walker and Charles Ricketts were revolted at the 
vulgar, tawdry and expressionless books of the time and, being 
masters of practical imagination, their protest was creative. 
They wanted beautiful books, and instead of grumbling with 
what existed, they set to work and made what they could not 
buy. They were moved again by that vital form of atavism 
which, by tlirowing back to an earlier period, picks up the 
dropped thread of tradition, and so continues the process 
of evolution ; their protest therefore became, in the best 
sense of the word, a revolution : a turning round to the 
period when craftsmanship, imagination and life were one 
and indivisible. 

In the making of books the first and most essential demand 
is for legibility. The printing must be readable. To this 
end must type be fashioned and page built. Charles 
Ricketts, with those two other masters of the revival of 
great printing, William Morris and Emery Walker, realised 
this need, and in their founts they aimed at clarity and 
utility combined with personal expression. The commercial 
tradition of the oblong letter, with its false utility, was 
abandoned, and the dignity of the square and round types 
of Jenson restored, possible loss of space by such a 
proceeding being obviated by greater care in the building 
of the page and in the setting of the lines. 

The Arts and Crafts movement had, as we have seen, set 
people of taste hunting for the lost threads of good craft 
tradition, and the fin de siecle revival of printing as an art- 
craft was one of the most successful results of its efforts. 
The study of well-printed books of the past led William Morris 
and Emery Walker towards what may be called a new ethic 
of good printing. They set forth their ideas in a joint essay 
forming one of the Arts and Crafts Essays of 1893. " The 
essential point to remember," they said, "is that the orna- 
ment, whatever it is, whether picture or pattern-work, 
should form part of the jMge, should be a part of the whole 
scheme of the book. Simple as this proposition is, it is 



THE REVIVAL OF PRINTING 257 

necessary to be stated, because the modern practice is to 
disregard the relation between the printing and the orna- 
ment altogether, so that if the two are helpful to one another 
it is a mere matter of accident. The due relation of letters 
to pictures and other ornaments was thoroughly understood 
by the old printers ; so that, even when the woodcuts are 
very rude indeed, the proportions of the page still give 
pleasure by the sense of richness that the cuts and letters 
together convey. When, as is most often the case, there 
is actual beauty in the cuts, the books so ornamented are 
amongst the most delightful works of art that have ever 
been produced. Therefore, granted well-designed type, due 
spacing of the lines and words, and proper position of the 
page on the paper, all books might be at least comely and 
well-looking ; and if to these good qualities were added really 
beautiful ornament and pictures, printed books might once 
again illustrate to the full position of our Society that a work 
of utility might be also a work of art, if we cared to make it 
so." This passage contains the germ idea of the return to 
fine printing. 

Still, although so much research and good work was done 
by William Morris and Emery Walker, the desire to produce 
books of dignity and beauty inspired more than one group 
of enthusiasts, and the founders of the Kelmscott Press were 
not the first in practical results. The Hobby Horse (1886- 
1892), edited by Herbert P. Home and Selwyn Image, with 
its carefully built pages, was an earlier intimation of coming 
developments, and Hacon & Ricketts devised a new typo- 
graphical beauty by the publication of The Dial, in 1889. 
The revival, however, began to find itself at the Arts and 
Crafts Exhibition of 1888, when Emery Walker contributed 
an essay on printing to the catalogue. In the years 1889 
and 1890 Morris made a definitely practical move by super- 
intending the printing of three books. The House of the 
Wolfings, The Roots of the Mountains and the Gunnlang Saga, 
at the Chiswick Press. All this time he had been brooding 
upon the idea of a Press of his OAvn, and he made his first 
experiments towards the tbundation of the Kelmscott Press 



258 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

in 1889 and 1890. " What I wanted," he wrote in the Note 
on his aims in founding the Kelmscott Press, "was letter 
pure in form ; severe, without needless excreseences ; solid, 
without the thickening and thinning of the line which is the 
essential fault of the ordinary modern type, and which makes 
it difficult to read ; and not compressed laterally, as all later 
type has grown to be owing to commercial exigencies. There 
was only one source from which to take examples of this 
perfected Roman type— to wit, the works of the great 
Venetian printers of the fifteenth century, of whom Nicholas 
Jenson produced the completest and most Roman characters 
from 1^70 to 1176. This type I studied with much care, 
getting it photographed to a big scale, and drawing it over 
many times before I began designing my own letters ; so 
that though I think I mastered the essence of it, I did not 
copy it servilely ; in fact, my Roman type, especially in the 
lower case, tends rather to the Gothic than does Jenson 's." 
The desire thus embodied in words became a living fact. 
Dm'ing 1890 Morris was experimenting with his types, and 
on the 31st January in the following year the first trial sheet 
was printed on the Kelmscott Press, which had been set up 
in a cottage close to Kelmscott House on the Upper Mall, 
Hammersmith. 

The first book printed was Morris's own romance. The 
Story of the Glittering Plain ; it was finished on 4th April, 
and in the same year Poems by the Wuy was set up and 
printed. For the next five years, and to the end of the great 
craftsman's life, books were printed at the rate of about ten 
each year, and in all fifty-tliree works were issued during 
the life of the Press (1891-1897), which together stand unique 
among books both for honesty of purpose and beauty of 
accomplishment. The books published naturally reflect 
Morris's own literary taste. The act of printing was with 
him an act of reverence, and all of the volumes issued were 
printed in the spirit of love of fine literature and his own work. 
Three founts of type were created by Morris. The first, 
called the " Golden," was a Roman type inspired by Jenson 
but having a Gothic appearance, which makes it unlike any 



Page Decoration from the Kelmscott Coleridge 

By William Morris 



THE REVIVAL OF PRINTING 259 

other type in existence. This fount has extremely beautiful 
letters, solid and clear, making a page of vivid blackness 
combined with absolute legibility. The next, called the 
"Troy," was a large Gothic type, beautiful in its way, and 
quite legible, but archaic in effect and unsuitable for general 
printing. The last type to be cast was the " Chaucer " ; 
this was simply the "Troy " type reduced for the purpose 
of printing the noble folio edition of the works of Geoffrey 
Chaucer. With these three founts books of several sizes 
were produced with equally good results. There were 
delightful 16mo's, such as The Tale of the Emperor Cousians, 
The Friendship of Amis and Amile and Morris's own lecture 
on Gothic Architecture, which was printed by the Kelmscott 
Press at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition of 1893, The 
octavos covered a wide field, and included some of the 
masterpieces of the Press, notably the Poems of Coleridge, 
Termyson's Maud, Hand and Soul, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 
and The Nature of Gothic, by Ruskin. The quartos contain 
several of Morris's own works, notable examples being News 
from Nowhere and The Wood Beyond the World, and Caxton's 
Uistoryes of Troye, The Golden Legend and George Caven- 
dish's Life of Cardinal Wolsey. Nine books were issued in 
folio — namely. The History of Reynard the Fox (1892), The 
History of Godfrey ofBologne (1893), Sidonia the Sorceress, by 
William Meinhold, translated by Lady Wilde (1893), The 
Story of the Glittering Plain,^ by William Morris (1894) ; 
Atalanta in Calydon, by Swinburne (1894), The Tale of 
Beowulf (1895), The Life and Death of Jason, by William 
Morris (1895), and The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1896). 

Many of the volumes have woodcuts, chiefly from draw- 
ings by Burne-Jones, and Morris designed all the elaborate 
initial letters, borders, title-pages and other decorations. 
It would not be easy in the ordinary way to single out any 
book for special notice among so many masterpieces of 
printing, each possessing characteristics of its own worthy 
of individual praise, but one book, and as it happens the one 
that Morris printed with his fullest reverence, does actually 
' The first Kelmscott issue of this book was in quarto. 



260 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

stand out from among the rest with distinction. That book 
is the noble foho containing the works of Chaucer enshrined 
in type cast for the purpose, with Morris's own superb and 
appropriate decorations, and eighty- six illustrations by 
Burne- Jones. Never was author paid so handsome a tribute 
as by this book, and when it is in its complete form, with 
Cobden-Sanderson's binding, one is surely in the presence 
of the most beautiful and the best designed book the world 
has ever seen. 

William Morris was essentially a decorator ; he would 
have had every one of the fine products of his amazing 
vitality burst into flower and leaf, into wondrous device and 
every beauty of form. Yet in everything he did the fine 
simplicity of his nature was a saving grace. But with the 
books designed by Charles Ricketts we find the expression of 
an entirely different temperament, or a temperament which 
was assertively personal and essentially individual, as against 
the democratic and communal sense of Morris. This indi- 
viduality is seen in most of the books of the Vale Press, and 
in those beautiful volumes. The Dial and Oscar Wilde's The 
Sphinx and The House of Pomegranates, which were the 
immediate forerunners and first causes of that Press. 

Both William Morris and Charles Ricketts, however, were 
inspired in their first founts by the classical types of Jenson, 
in whom the Roman letter had its consummation, although 
the deep-rooted Gothic spirit of Morris was naturally not to 
be tied to that particular form. The significance of this 
adoption of the Roman type lies in the fact that although 
the first movable types were a standardisation of the written 
missal of the Middle Ages, and essentially Gothic in char- 
acter, lettering itself was of Greek and Roman origin. In- 
deed, where the Teutonic designers departed most from the 
Roman standard, as they did in their capital letters, they 
were not nearly so successful as when they adhered more 
strictly to the earlier forms, as they did in their superior 
" lower cases. " Morris, in spite of his intense love of Gothic, 
fully realised this, and although the Kelmscott books in the 
mass reveal beauties suggesting Caxton and Wenkyn de 



THE REVIVAL OF PRINTING 261 

Worde, it will be found on a more intimate acquaintance 
with them that the Renaissance has contributed in no small 
way to their final charm. 

Just as William Morris, in Charles Ricketts's words, de- 
rived inspiration from the " sunny pages of the Renaissance," 
and finally made books equal to, and in some cases better 
than, the best books of the Gothic printers, so Ricketts took 
inspiration from the same source, and although the volumes 
of the Vale Press never quite resemble the Gothic books, he 
has admitted the value even to him of the products of the 
Kelmscott Press. Speaking of the books made under his 
supervision before the establishment of the Vale Press, he 
wrote, in his Defence of the Revival of Printing : "I regret 
that I had not then seen The House of the Wolfings or The 
Roots of the Mountains, printed for Mr Morris as early as 
1888 ^ ; these might have initiated me at the time to a better 
and more severe style, and I am now puzzled that my first 
impression of The Glittering Plain, 1891 (the first Kelmscott 
book), was one of disappointment." 

The earliest of the Ricketts books were inspired but not 
printed by the founder of the Vale Press. They were and 
are a standing example of what can be done through the 
ordinary commercial medium when taste is in command. 
The illustrations, cover designs, end-papers, and general 
format of these books were the work of Ricketts ; and the 
type was the best that could be found in some of the more 
responsible printing houses. The first example of this work 
is to be found in The Dial — a sumptuously printed quarto 
magazine first published at the Vale, Chelsea, in 1889 ; No. 2 
appeared in February 1892 ; No. 3 in October 1893 ; and 
No. 4, which bore the imprint, " Hacon & Ricketts," in 
1896 ; the fifth and last number appearing in 1897. The Dial 
was issued under the joint editorship of Charles Ricketts and 
Charles H. Shannon. The first number contained an etching 
by Ricketts and a lithograph in colours and gold, and twelve 
other designs by him. The cover was designed by Shannon, 

' The House of the Wolfings was printed in 1889, and The Roots of 
the Mountains in iSqo. 



262 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

but was discarded in subsequent issues, its place being taken 
by a superior design, cut as well as drawn by Ricketts. In 
the second number the latter also makes his first appearance 
as an engraver on wood, one of the main features of the 
volume being his series of initial letters, ornaments, head- 
pieces, and culs-de-lampe. In No. 4 of The Dial appeared 
two specimen pages of the Vale Press, then being formed. 

Before the Press was established, however, other important 
books had been issued under his supervision. One of the 
earliest of these, Silverpoints, by John Gray, was published 
by Elkin Mathews and John Lane in 1893. A few of the 
initials of this uncommon but elegant volume are decorated, 
but the majority are simple Roman capitals, the text of the 
volume being in italics. Earlier even than this the two 
artists had collaborated in the production of Oscar Wilde's 
House of Pomegranates, published by Messrs Osgood, 
M'llvaine & Co. in 1891. The result was less a success than 
a curious attempt at decorated bookmaking ; the most 
successful parts being the vignettes by Ricketts. Among 
other books of this period are the Poems of Lord de Tabley 
and In the Key of Blue, by John Addington Symonds, the 
former with illustrations and cover, the latter with cover 
only, by Ricketts. 

All these books were more or less tentative. The road 
towards perfection was being made ; something very like 
perfection was reached, however, in the Daphnis and Chloe 
(1893), the Hero and Leander (1894) and The Sphinx (1894)— 
the two first published by Ricketts «& Shannon at the Vale 
Press, the last by Mr John Lane. The Daphnis and Chloe 
is a quarto volume printed in old-faced pica type and pro- 
fusely and beautifully illustrated with designs and initial 
letters from woodcuts. It is said to be " the first book 
published in modern times with woodcuts by the artist in a 
page arranged by himself." Hero and Leander (Marlowe & 
Chapman's version) is an octavo ; it is conceived in a more 
restrained key, and the result is altogether more satisfying, 
in spite of a formal hardness in the setting of the decorations. 
Theme may have something to do with this, just as it has in 



^Ippi^^MRqa^^ 




I 



o 



^ 



THE REVIVAL OF PRINTING 263 

Daphnis and Chloe, where the lightness of the subject carries 
triumphantly the luxuriance of the decorations. The Sphinx, 
by Oscar Wilde, is the most remarkable of the books of this 
period. It is a small quarto in ivory-like vellum, with a rich 
design in gold, printed and decorated throughout in red, 
green and black. The exotic mind of Wilde is revealed in 
the decorations of this volume more than in any other : the 
strange vision of things, the imagination that moulds passion- 
ate ideas into figures which are almost ascetic, and into 
arabesques which are in themselves glimpses and revelations 
of the intricate mystery of life. 

The first book printed in the Vale type was The Early 
Poems of John Milton, a quarto decorated with initials and 
frontispiece, cut by the artist on wood. Speaking of the 
frontispiece of this volume, H. C. Marillier says: "It is 
interesting to compare this with one of the Kelmscott frontis- 
pieces, in order to realise how completely individual is each 
case, and how different is the design of the borders. There 
is nothing in all the flowing tracery of William Morris which 
remotely resembles the intricate knot-work and geometrical 
orderliness of the Milton borders." This is true, and a 
further glance at the Vale Press books reveals also that the 
inventiveness of Charles Ricketts is much greater than that 
of William Morris, though it is not so free and, paradoxically, 
not so formal. But, unlike those of Morris, the Vale designs 
do not convey a sense of inevitability, a feeling that the 
design is the unconscious blossoming of the page. 

The Kelmscott books not only look as if letter and decora- 
tion had grown one out of the other ; they look as if they 
could go on growing. The Vale Press books, on the other 
hand, have all the supersensitiveness of things which have 
been deliberately made according to a fastidious though 
eclectic taste and a strict formula. It is the difference be- 
tween naturalness and refinement. Yet at the same time, 
although Ricketts does not suggest organic growth in his 
decorated books, he suggests growth by segregation — by a 
rearrangement of parts which seem to have come together 
mathematically, or which are built up in counterpoint like a 



264 THE EIGHTP:EN NINETIES 

theme in music. Particularly do we get this effect from the 
decorations of the Vale Shakespeare and from many of the 
minor decorated leaves throughout all the volumes. In 
the use of leaf figures as a kind of super-punctuation, an 
intellectual process seems to have taken the place of the 
subtle and indefinable taste which dominates matters of art. 
The leaves seem to have been thought into their places, and 
the result is not always happy. 

The books of the Vale Press have other qualities which 
distinguish them from those of other similar presses. The 
Kelmscott Press, in the matter of bindings, for instance, 
confined itself to vellum and plain grey boards. The Doves 
Press, established in the next decade, adhered to a fine and 
peculiar kind of vellum. The Vale Press books made a 
departure in several instances by appearing in daintily 
decorated paper boards of various colours, the designs hav- 
ing a pleasant chintz-like effect, more often to be met with 
in the end-papers of some modern books, but an obvious 
development of the Italian decorated paper cover. Again 
colours, red and sometimes blue and green, play a large part 
in the pages of the Vale Press books, blending with the black 
in many cases most satisfactorily. 

Some fifty books in all were produced, and these covered 
a wide literary field, including such works as Landor's 
Epicurus, Leontion and Ternissa ; Spiritual Poems, bj^ John 
Gray ; Fair Rosamund, by Michael Field ; the poems of Sir 
John Suckling ; Shakespeare's Songs and Sonnets ; Nym- 
phidia, by Michael Drayton ; Campion's songs ; Eitipedocles, 
by Matthew Arnold ; two volumes of Blake, and two of 
Keats ; Sir Philip Sidney's sonnets ; Dramatic Romances, by 
Robert Browning, the Lyrical Poems of Shelley ; The Ancient 
Mariner, by S. T. Coleridge ; Sonnets from the Portuguese, by 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning ; Hand and Soul and The Blessed 
Damozel, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Besides these, certain 
volumes illustrated by Lucien Pissarro were issued under the 
imprimatur of the Vale although printed on the artist's own 
private press, afterwards to be known as the Eragny Press. 

The Vale Press books were not presumably the kind of 



THE REVIVAL OF PRINTING 265 

books destined for an immediate and wide popularity. Yet 
each issue was speedily taken up by the hmited pubhc there 
is for fine examples of art- work, and the fact that almost im- 
mediately, and sometimes before the date of publication, the 
volumes were being quoted in the book markets at a premium 
would indicate that the books were not above the taste of 
everybody. Be this as it may, the demand for such books 
compared with that of the ordinary commercial volume was, 
and is at any time, a small one. At the same time, the effect 
of the Vale Press publications upon the general taste in books 
has been more pronounced than that of any of the other 
great presses of the Eighteen Nineties. This is probably due 
to the fact that Charles Ricketts not only at first worked 
through the ordinary publisher, but that he had his work 
done by a good trade firm of printers, Messrs Ballantyne & 
Hanson, and did not own, as William Morris did, his own 
presses. In the same way Morris himself had a marked effect 
upon ordinary straightforward printing, by insisting upon 
an intelligent use of Caslon's old-faced type when supervising 
the printing of his own prose works. He knew it was not 
safe to leave so important a matter to the haphazard of 
commerce. The supreme result of this concern is to be seen, 
of course, in the splendid first edition of The Roots of the 
Mountains, issued by Messrs Reeves & Turner and printed 
at the Chiswiek Press. The influence of Charles Ricketts' 
books is to be seen in many of the early publications of Mr 
John Lane and Messrs Dent & Co. ; and the latter firm 
attempted deliberately to follow the Kelmscott tradition 
with Aubrey Beardsley's edition of the Morte d' Arthur. 

After the death of William Morris and the conclusion of 
the work of the Kelmscott Press, those who acted as Morris's 
assistants in the actual work of printing joined C. R. Ashbee 
of the Guild of Handicraft, who established the Essex House 
Press, using a fount of type designed by himself. Several 
well-printed volumes were the result of this enterprise, in- 
cluding the Treatises of Benvenuto Cellini on Metal Work and 
Sculpture, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Shakespeare's Poems, 
Shelley's Adanais, and King Edward Vll.'s Prayer Book, a 



266 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

noble folio printed in red and black. Some interesting books 
were also printed by H. G. Webb at the Caradoc Press ; and 
a simple dignity and altogether pleasant result has been 
achieved by Miss Elizabeth C. Yeats in the books printed on 
the Dun Emer, later called the Cuala Press, at Dundrum near 
Dublin. 

But the most notable outcome of the revival of printing 
since the closing of the Kelmscott and Vale presses is the 
Doves Press, established in 1900 by T. J. Cobden-Sanderson 
at Hammersmith. A beautiful Roman type was designed by 
Emery Walker, whose genius for fine craftsmanship in every- 
thing associated with the printing arts made for the further 
success of this venture which has to its credit a series of 
books of unsurpassable beauty. The Doves Press, although 
in the direct line of descent from Morris, was to some extent 
a reaction against decorated page, and by adhering strictly 
to the formal beauty of well-designed type and a well-built 
page it proved that all the requirements of good taste, good 
craftsmanship and utility could be achieved. There is 
nothing, for instance, quite so effective as the first page of 
the Doves Bible, with its great red initial "I " dominating 
the left-hand margin of the opening chapter of Genesis like a 
symbol of the eternal wisdom and simplicity of the wonderful 
Book. Neither foliation nor arabesque could better have 
introduced the first verse of the story of the Creation than 
this flaming, sword-like initial. This edition of the Bible in 
itself represents the last refuge of the complex in the simple, 
and stands beside the Kelmscott Chaucer without loss by 
comparison in beauty or workmanship. 

The Doves Press came nearer than the other private presses 
towards the realisation of its founder's axiom of the whole 
duty of typography, which, he said, was " to communicate 
to the imagination, without loss by the way, the thought or 
image intended to be communicated by the author." 



CHAPTER XX 

BRITISH IMPRESSIONISTS 

IN spite of the efforts of the Arts and Crafts movement 
the average man was still unmoved from his conviction 
that art was an affair of pictures. He even went so far 
as to believe that the new art movement was only accident- 
ally derived from pictorial art and would eventually end 
where it began — in something to hang on a wall. He was 
supported in this belief by the usual predominance given to 
picture talk in the discussions of the contending art factions. 
The Nineties were very fruitful of such discussions, inherit- 
ing as they did the still unsettled principles and contentions 
which survived from the artistic battles of the Eighties. 
These battles were never more than the British echo of 
French Impressionism, but they were complicated by the 
so-called naturalism of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. The 
latter was largely the affair of the preceding thirty years, 
and with the dawn of the Nineties Pre-Raphaelitism had 
become an accepted art convention for those desirous of 
accepting it, and a subject of indifference for the rest. 

Whistler, allied with but apart from the Impressionists, 
had fought the fight of the open-air school to as conclusive 
an end as such contests ever reach. And Ruskin's ideas 
had been almost entirely diverted into their more defensible 
channels of craftsmanship. George Moore had been for 
several years holding aloft the banner of French Impression- 
ism with conspicuous success, in Tlie Speaker and elsewhere, 
and William Ernest Henley had fought in The Scots Observer 
an equally vigorous and equally successful battle on behalf 
of the same ideals, laying stress upon a realism more definitely 
associated with romance. But in the midst of all this talk 
about paint and technique and new methods of approaching 
267 



268 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

Nature, there was a very real undercurrent of philosophic 
thought which was not afraid of associating pictorial art 
with social life and action. The old sanity of applied art 
constantly reasserted itself in the newer movements. 
Whistler also, when occasion offered, did not scorn applied 
art, as we know from his enthusiasm over the decoration of 
the Peacock Room at Sir James Leyland's house, and of his 
own house in Chelsea. Frank Brangwyn was as much in- 
clined towards mm'al painting as George Frederick Watts, 
whilst William Nicholson, James Pryde, Dudley Hardy and 
Aubrey Beardsley devoted time and talent to the creation 
of a national school of poster decorators. And the revival 
of the decorated book gave black and white art a new 
sphere of expression. 

Even so uncompromising an advocate of the framed 
picture as George Moore was not averse from discussing the 
value of pictures in relation to national life. Speaking of 
the practical utility of the Impressionist pictures he said : 
" They would inspire not only a desire to possess beautiful 
things, but I can imagine young men and women deriving 
an extraordinary desire of freedom from the landscapes of 
Monet and Sisley : Manet, too. Manet, perhaps, more than 
anyone liberates the mind from conventions, from pre- 
judices. He creates a spirit of revolt against the old ; he 
inculcates a desire of adventm*e. Adam standing in Eden 
looking at the sun rise was no more naked and unashamed 
than Manet. I believe that a gallery of Impressionist 
pictures would be more likely than any other pictures to 
send a man to France, and that is a great point. Everyone 
must go to France. France is the source of all the arts. 
Let the truth be told. We go there, every one of us, like 
rag-pickers, with baskets on our backs, to pick up the things 
that come in our way, and out of unconsidered trifles fortunes 
have often been made. We learn in France to appreciate 
not only art — we learn to appreciate life, to look upon life 
as an incomparable gift. In some caf6, in some Nouvelle 
Ath^nes, named though it be not in any Baedeker nor 
marked on any traveller's chart, the young man's soul will 




■-=-1 ■>: ? 

O >, s, 

u ^ ■=". 

a « ^' 



BRITISH IMPRESSIONISTS 269 

be exalted to praise life. Art is but praise of life, and it is 
only through art that we can praise life." Such an attitude 
is inseparable from the modern art movement, and it survives 
to-day in the development of the decorative arts among the 
Post Impressionists. 

Conventional pictorial art in this country at the time of 
the modern revolt had long suffered from hopeless privacy 
and class distinction. Richard Muther says: "English 
painting is exclusively an art based on luxury, optimism and 
aristocracy ; in its neatness, cleanliness and good-breeding 
it is exclusively designed to ingratiate itself with English 
ideas of comfort. Yet the pictures have to satisfy very 
different tastes — the taste of a wealthy middle class which 
wishes to have substantial nourishment, and the aesthetic 
taste of an elite class, which will only tolerate the quint- 
essence of art, the most subtle art that can be given. But 
all these works are not created for galleries, but for the 
drawing-room of a private house, and in subject and treat- 
ment they have all to reckon with the ascendant view that 
a picture ought, in the first place, to be an attractive article 
of furniture for the sitting-room. The traveller, the lover 
of antiquity, is pleased by imitation of the ancient style ; 
the sportsman, the lover of country life, has a delight in little 
rustic scenes, and the women are enchanted with feminine 
types. And everything must be kept within the bounds of 
what is charming, temperate and prosperous, without in any 
degree suggesting the struggle for existence. The pictures 
have themselves the grace of that mundane refinement from 
the midst of which they are beheld." Into some such con- 
dition of pictorial art the new men threw themselves, opening 
windows, as it were, and allowing the outside world, with all its 
rudeness and all its unseen and unrealised beauties, to enter. 

The organised revolt took the form of protest by the New 
English Art Club against the Royal Academy, and of the 
Glasgow School against the conventions of the Royal Scottish 
Academy, and as art movements generally begin elsewhere 
and end here, the battles they were fighting represented 
practically the end of the fight for Impressionism. The 



270 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

artistic public was gradually becoming used to pictures that 
were visions of light and atmosphere rather than pictorial 
anecdotes, and the leaders ol' the new movement were being 
absorbed by both academies. Absorption by the old enemy 
was, however, not the fate of all the revolutionaries, for 
several, including their earliest leader, Wilson Steer, main- 
tained an attitude of no compromise. Neither did the 
battle with academic conventions end with the work of the 
two groups of artists named. It was carried on into the new 
century and linked up with new movements by the Inter- 
national Society of Painters, Sculptors and Gravers, founded, 
with Whistler as President and Lavery as Vice-President, 
in 1898. 

The outstanding painters of the Impressionist movement 
in this country represented all phases of modern art and 
considerable variety of individual expression. There were 
Walter Sickert, Maitland and Roussel, who received early 
inspiration from Whistler ; the realists of the Newlyn School 
led by Stanhope Forbes, and deriving their art from Bastien 
Lepage ; and more individual and, consequently, less easily 
classified, such painters as George Clausen, John S. Sargent, 
Wilson Steer, William Rothenstein, Frank Brangwyn, 
William Nicholson, William Orpen and, later on, Augustus 
John ; whilst standing apart from any particular " move- 
ment," but none the less modern, were Charles Conder, 
Dudley Hardy, Maurice Greiffenhagen, Robert Fowler, 
Sidney H. Sime, Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon. 
The Glasgow School included most of the Scottish painters 
who became subjects of discussion at the Grosvenor Gallery 
Exhibition promoted by Sir Coutts Lindsay, on the sugges- 
tion of Clausen, in 1890. Among the men from the north 
who were either associated with the Glasgow group or in 
sympathy with its bid for freedom were John Lavery, James 
Guthrie, Arthur Melville, E. A. Hornel, T. Millie Dow, George 
Henry, James Pryde, D. Y. Cameron, Harrington Mann, 
W. Y. Macgregor and, at a later date, J. T. Peploe and John 
Duncan Fergusson. 

Out of this wealth of artistic genius it would be idle to 



BRITISH IMPRESSIONISTS 271 

classify or to associate any single painter finally with any 
definite group of painters, even though he had deliberately 
allied himself with one or the other schools or coteries. 
The really big men of the period can only be classified in so 
indefinite a way as to make such classification almost worth- 
less. The artistic associations of the period are interesting 
from another point of view. They prove the existence not 
only of widespread activity in painting, but of a healthy de- 
su'c for that camaraderie which hitherto, with the exception of 
the friendships of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, had been 
almost confined to Paris. But if classification is impossible 
or unnecessary it is quite permissible to show how remark- 
ably the artists of the time were grouped by the prevailing 
modern tendency. And it is interesting to note that, 
although the forward movement in pictorial art absolved 
itself from all charges of literariness, its very existence was 
a part of that trend of modern ideas which was affecting all 
the arts. In literature the tendency was called Realism, in 
the graphic arts it was called Impressionism. In this book 
I have called it — the search for reality. That search was the 
culmination of all the activities and changes of the nineteenth 
century. And in the last decade of the century it saw the 
human mind fall back upon individual preference as the 
surest guide to the fine arts and the bigger and more difficult 
art of life. 

Every painter of the Nineties who stood for modernity 
strove to use his own personality and his own experience as 
the test of his art. He may have said that he would paint 
things as they are, but in his heart he knew that that was 
an impossible ideal. Those painters of genius who had set 
out with the intention had ended always by painting their 
own particular view of things, and modern art-philosophy 
sought to prove, and succeeded in proving, that such results 
justified the means. Auguste Rodin, who is the greatest, as 
well as the most realistic and most personal, of modem 
sculptors, insisted upon the reverent and exact copying of 
Nature as a means towards personal expression. And as a 
further proof that naturalism may produce personal variety, 



272 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

one has but to remember the Pre-Raphaelites, who were as 
devoted in the pursuit of natural exactitude as any of the 
Impressionists ; but, with the possible exception of Ford 
Madox Brown, they never produced a canvas that was not 
romantic and literary, and, in spite of the most devoted 
attention to Nature, unnatural. The cause of this was 
that, whilst talking much of Nature, they were not inspired 
by physical reality at all. They were essentially a group of 
thinkers and visionaries, and the whole of the movement 
was book-inspired. It was the result of life approached by 
way of the Arthurian and the Biblical legends, Dante and 
Shakespeare, and the observation of natural things always 
subserved this literary interest. The Pre-Raphaelites brought 
with them a fine aesthetic sense and high piu-pose, and some 
of them could draw, and all of them paint, but, without any 
intention of underestimating their achievement, it must be 
admitted that they never succeeded in doing more than repre- 
sent in paint what had already been realised in literature. 

The Impressionists adopted the opposite course. They 
treated the art of painting as the mediimi of actual sight. 
What could be seen rather than what could be thought or 
imagined was the business of their art. This did not mean 
the ultimate eradication of thought from painting, but it did 
mean that thought must take second place to vision. Where 
thought existed in the artist it was bound to show in his work, 
but that work was primarily a view of life arranged in tones 
and values of colour and light. As a matter of fact, the Im- 
pressionist paintings do actually reveal abundance of thought, 
and nowadays it is quite easy to see that the movement was 
even more intellectual than Pre-Raphaelitism ; but never in 
the literary sense. In this country Impressionism did not 
reach its logical conclusion. The older English movement 
had its uncompromising Holman Hunt, as Impressionism in 
France had its Manet, but the modernists of the Nineties in 
this country recognised no logic of progress save idiosyncrasy 
or circumstance. For that reason the period produced no 
convention in painting. It borrowed much from France 
and something from Germany, it defended its adopted ideas 



BRITISH IMPRESSIONISTS 273 

with spirit, it compromised where and when it liked, and it 
argued about the meaning of art, sometimes as if a definition 
would confirm or compel a renaissance. For the rest, it 
produced many competent painters, but fewer than might 
have been expected who could be said to represent the 
peculiar genius of the age. 

The characteristic artists of the period were drawn from 
no particular school ; indeed, in many instances they were 
quite remote from all definable groups. Aubrey Beardsley, 
although deriving in some measure from Burne-Jones, might 
easily have stepped out of eighteenth-century France with 
Charles Conder ; Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon, 
Robert Fowler and Maurice Greiffenhagen, although recall- 
ing past influences, have each sufficient individuality to 
stand as manifestations of the more definite spirit of the 
period without in any single instance representing all that 
was modern or strikingly new. 

Charles Conder represents perhaps more than any of 
these artists, except Beardsley, the peculiar artificial mood 
of the Nineties. His work has the indefinable hot-house 
atmosphere of the decadence. The drowsiness of a replete 
civilisation idles through his paintings, and to the innate 
luxury of his themes he added the material luxury of the silk 
panels and fans which he loved to decorate. Nothing is 
decisive about his vision save the voluptuousness of doing 
nothing. His world is all languorous and dreamful, and 
there is no movement except the occasional strolling or 
dancing of stately or delicate persons and the swaying of 
fans ; no sound save the rustle of silk or the music of faintly 
touched harps or viols ; no odours save those of flowers and 
scented bodies ; and for place and boundary there is only 
colour — colom* suggesting form, suggesting all corporeal 
things, suggesting even itself, for Conder never more than 
hints at the vivid possibilities of life, more than a hint might 
waken his puppets from their Laodicean dream. " Conder's 
women are not timeless," writes Charles Ricketts, " they 
have forgotten their age ; but this, like beauty, is often a 
mere matter of opinion ! We shall find their histories on the 



274 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

stage of Beaumarchais : they have passed into the realms 
of immortahty not in the paintings of Watteau but in the 
melodies of Mozart. They are 'The Countess,' Susanna, 
Donna Elvira ; all are anxious to pardon — they are peeping 
at the moving pageant, for Don Juan was seen but a moment 
since. But what can have detained Donna Anna ? It is so 
late, the ' Queen of the Night ' has sung her great aria, the 
air is close — there are too many roses ! " Too many roses ! 
Charles Conder's art is in that phrase. It is the art of the 
privileged, recalling the decadent folk who were the prey of 
the Morlocks in H. G. Wells' romance. Watteau, Fragonard 
and Monticelli have each contributed something towards the 
making of this delicate art, but, as Ricketts points out, " the 
rest of his art is modern, and was possible only at the time in 
which it appeared. " If the Fetes Galantes of Watteau became 
literatm'c in Paul Verlaine, they were translated back into paint- 
ing byCharles Conder ; and both heand the poet added to them 
their own special sense of the world-weariness of modernity. 

Equally characteristic of the Nineties, but of a more virile 
ty^e, were James Pryde and William Nicholson. Pryde 
took the life about him as his model, the town folk and the 
country folk, and with power and originality made them live 
again in paint. Nicholson saw both the countryside and the 
town with a new vision which combined when transferred to 
his canvases reticence of colour and power of suggestion. 
During the period his masterly series of woodcuts in colour 
were widely known and appreciated at first through the 
series of portraits in The Neiv Review, and later in such 
volumes as London Types and the Almanack of Twelve Sports. 
It was Pryde and Nicholson, under the title of the Beggar- 
staff Brothers, who gave the poster movement, already well 
established in France, something like a firm basis in this 
country. They were not alone in the field, but it was their 
work which made British genius a factor to be reckoned with 
in a peculiarly modern branch of art. Each had studied in 
Paris and had doubtless come under the spell of the striking 
poster work of Toulouse-Lautrec, but the designs afterwards 
produced by them were in no sense imitative. Indeed, as 




The Arrival of Prince Charming 

By Charles Cornier 
From tlie picture in t lie possession of Mr. Grant Richards 



BRITISH IMPRESSIONISTS 275 

Charles Hiatt has pointed out, their posters were intensely 
English in character. "In their way," he said, "they are 
as racy of the soil as the caricatures of Rowlandson, the 
paintings of Morland, or the drawings of Charles Keene." 
The work of the Beggarstaff Brothers was first seen at the 
Poster Exhibition held at the Royal Aquarium, Westminster, 
in 1894. Their exhibit included the masterly Hamlet, 
stencilled in four colours, and a number of sketches and 
studies for posters of all kinds. The attractive use of simple 
masses of colour without shading, in fine, the entirely 
successful application of the idea of the stencil to poster 
work, made the artists famous at a bound, and their posters 
became familiar and altogether satisfying features of the 
street hoardings. It is worth recording, however, that al- 
though the Beggarstaff Brothers won so much appreciation, 
there were people who could see nothing but blotches of 
paint in the new work. This may be illustrated by a story 
told of an early adventure of the artists with a client. The 
Beggarstaff Brothers had been commissioned to produce 
a poster for the Drury Lane Pantomime, 1895-1896. The 
result was that classic among posters, the Cinderella. But 
the work did not find favoiu- with Sir Augustus Harris ; and 
the famous manager was supported in his dislike by Dan 
Leno, who thought the poster looked as though someone had 
spilt ink down it. The situation was saved by the fortunate 
arrival of Phil May, who, realising the state of affairs, turned 
the position by innocently congratulating Sir Augustus on 
having been so fortunate in obtaining such an effective 
advertisement. 

The chief characteristics of painting in the Nineties were 
personal courage and adventurous technique. Years of 
strife with convention had at length cleared a path for free 
play in both, and, although skirmishing still continued, those 
who desired to be themselves in paint had at least as much 
encouragement as their brothers in the literary camp. 

The works of painters who thought and dreamt about life 
were, of course, as numerous as ever, but no exhibition was 
complete without specimens of the work of those painters 



276 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

who added to thought and imagination the revived faculty 
of careful observation. And even modern artists who re- 
mained visionaries and dreamers adopted a symbolism of 
form and colour which possessed a new delicacy and an 
approximation to observed knowledge in keeping with the 
tendencies of the period though of earlier inspiration. 
Ricketts and Charles Shannon achieved rare qualities of 
imaginative expression with fine technique ; Maurice 
Greiffenhagen and Robert Fowler gave Impressionism a 
romantic meaning, and symbolism found exponents in these 
painters and others, and in the work of many black and white 
artists and pen-draughtsmen. But the final pictorial 
achievement of the period is not to be found in one artist, 
but in many ; perhaps not in any painter or group of painters, 
but in the fresh possibilities of vision thrown open by the 
whole artistic effort of the decade, possibilities which led 
always to the most modern of all accomplishments — the art 
of looking at life in one's own way. 

It is not easy to single out painters from among the large 
number contributing to this movement, but a fair idea of the 
more normal tendencies which have survived from the time 
may be acquired by a consideration of three typical fin de 
siecle artists whose work has maintained its high quality 
and distinction down to to-day. These painters are John 
Lavery, William Rothenstein and Frank Brangwyn. Each 
of them represents a compromise with Impressionism. They 
are Impressionists, each in his own way, but the way of each 
is to add to an essentially realistic idea some personal quality 
which prevents that idea ever reaching its full logical con- 
clusion. Lavery is in the Velasquez- Whistler descent, and 
he possesses technical reserves which might, had he been a 
Frenchman, have urged him into the camp of scientific Im- 
pressionism. He preferred to use his modern skill, and all 
that modernity had taught him in the way of vision, in mat- 
ing reality with sentiment. He lacks Whistler's decorative 
sense, and even when he is most realistic he never achieves 
the frankness of a Manet or a Degas. But taking what he 
wants from reality, and adding what he pleases from human 



BRITISH IMPRESSIONISTS 277 

sentiment (which is also reahty), he has created a series of 
paintings with some of the technical qualities of Whistler's 
portraits, but nothing of that profound sense of character 
which immortalises those works. 

William Rothenstein carries Impressionism further than 
Lavery, and instead of sentiment he adds a remarkably keen 
sense of reality to thoughtfulness and spirituality. His 
pictures are interpretations. In all of them intellect plays 
an important part ; but he is too much of an artist ever to 
allow mind finally to dominate imagination or vision. He 
recalls George Frederick Watts in his concern for what is 
lofty in thought and inspiring in idea, although he has never 
illustrated abstract ideas after the manner of Watts, nor 
are his pictures didactic. His works impress by quiet pro- 
fundity of theme and fine qualities of light and colour. His 
test for art, as expressed in the introductory chapter of his 
essay on Goya (1900), can be applied with success to his own 
pictures : " For however many reasons men may give for 
the admiration of masterpieces," he said, " it is in reality the 
probity and intensity with which the master has carried out 
his work, by which they are dominated ; and it is his method 
of overcoming difficulties, not of evading them, which gives 
style, breadth and becoming mystery to his execution. And 
this quality of intensity, whether it be the result of curiosity 
for form, or of a profound imagination for nature, which 
lives, as it were, upon the surface of a drawing, or of a picture, 
is the best test we have for what we may consider as art." 
Rothenstein has many of the characteristics of the Nineties 
— curiosity about life and thought, personality in vision and 
statement, and that sincerity of aim which is originality ; 
but he is never decadent, if only for the reason that he never 
looked upon art as a thing in itself, but as a means towards 
the fulfilment of life. 

Impressionism and romanticism meet in the art of Frank 
Brangwyn, as Impressionism and sentiment meet in that of 
John Lavery, and Impressionism and intellect in Rothen- 
stein. But more than that — a picture by Brangwyn is a 
bridge between private luxury and public splendour. His 



278 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

art suggests the big virile world made splendid by the 
romance of action. His pictures, even his etchings, seem to 
have small relationship with what are called the fine arts ; 
they are not to be associated with dainty things : the bric- 
a-brac of drawing-rooms and the baubles of collectors and 
connoisseurs. Brangwyn's work has no connection with 
such things. He is as far removed from them as Walt 
Whitman is from the writers of drawing-room love Ijncics. 
Everything about his work is large and vigorous. His vivid 
colours, his heroic masses of form, his bold lighting, even 
apart from any bigness of canvas, suggest the public place 
rather than the room. Frank Brangwyn is, in fact, a decora- 
tive painter. Impressionism in its less imaginative aspects 
hardly touched him ; he learnt from it what all artists could 
learn without endangering imagination or individual genius 
— the use of light in relation to colour and form. And this 
knowledge he applied to his own inborn sense of design in 
the creation of those richly patterned mural paintings which 
in themselves are little short of an artistic renaissance. 

It will be seen from these three examples that the painters 
of the period were wide-ranged in vision. Yet even they 
symbolise little more than the broad and normal phases of 
painting. Such painters, to name but three more, as Walter 
Sickert, James Pryde and E. A. Hornel, are as different in 
every way from Lavery, Rothenstein and Brangwyn, as they 
are from one another. But they also represent the period. 
Sickert by his mastery over his materials and by the indi- 
viduality of his outlook ; Pryde by equal mastery and equal 
individuality in addition to rare insight into character ; and 
Hornel by his unique sense of decoration and colour. Such 
variety among painters was hitherto unknown in this 
country, and apart from the vitality it reveals, it indicates 
also a complete victory over academic convention, and the 
creation of such a margin of freedom as would permit of 
any painter thenceforth expressing himself in his own way. 
This freedom, subject of battle for several decades, was 
consummated in the Nineties. 



CHAPTER XXI 



IN BLACK AND WHITE 



IN no other branch of pictorial art was there so much 
activity during the whole of the period, and, on the 
whole, so much undisputed excellence, as in the various 
pen and pencil drawings which blossomed from innumerable 
books and periodicals. To a considerable extent this re- 
markable efflorescence of an art which had remained passive 
for so many years was an offshoot of the renaissance of 
decorative art. But not entirely was this so, for there were 
notable developments also among those artists who were 
content to illustrate a theme in the usual nineteenth-century 
manner without any regard for the appearance of the printed 
page. These artists were not concerned with the ultimate 
balance and proportion of a book as a work of art ; their 
business was interpretative, and their medium, pictures, and 
they considered it an achievement to make drawings which, 
whilst serving their immediate illustrative purpose, remained 
in themselves separate and even independent pictures. The 
two tendencies in black and white art had existed side by 
side in the past ; generally, however, one was degenerating 
whilst the other was developing in power. But in the Nineties 
both achieved a distinction rarely, if ever, attained before, 
either individually or together. The Italian Renaissance had 
its great decorated books, and many years later the Victorian 
period produced a group of ingenious and capable wood- 
engravers, who often strove to recapture the lost decorative 
sense, but without much success. Whilst the Renaissance 
had no illustrators as we understand them, the Victorian 
period could boast such masterly comic artists in black and 
white as John Leech, Charles Keene and George du Maurier. 
But at no other time were there existing in this country such 
279 



280 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

book decorators as William Morris, Walter Crane, Charles 
Ricketts, Laurence Housman and Aubrey Beardsley, 
together with such illustrators as Phil May, S. H. Sinie, 
Bernard Partridge, Linley Sambourne, Harry Furniss, 
Raven Hill and E. J. Sullivan. It was left for the final 
decade of the nineteenth century to show, in an outburst of 
ability as prolific as it was varied, the full strength of our 
native genius for all forms of black and white art, just as 
earlier in the century we exhibited a similar facility in the 
art of landscape painting. 

The idea of book decoration which developed to so great 
an extent in the Nineties was, of course, closely related to 
the Arts and Crafts movement and the revival of good print- 
ing. But with the exception of William Morris and Charles 
Ricketts few designers had facilities for that intimate 
association with reproductive methods which was considered 
so essential. The application of photography to pictorial, 
reproductive processes further aided in widening this breach 
between designer and producer and helped to create a separ- 
ate class of decorative book illustrators who were personally 
independent of the crafts of reproduction. The weaknesses 
of the decorated books of the period are due rather to this 
separation of art and craft than to any absence of capacity 
on either side. The aim of the book decorators, as in the 
case of the best printers, was to produce designs which should 
not be beautiful merely in themselves but beautiful in their 
relationship to the whole of the book — both from the point 
of view of appearance and idea. "I think," wrote Walter 
Crane, in Decorative Illustration (1896), "that book illustra- 
tion should be something more than a collection of accidental 
sketches. Since one cannot ignore the constiiictive organic 
element in the formation — the idea of the book itself — it is 
so far inartistic to leave it out of account in designing work 
intended to form an essential or integral part of that book. 
I do not, however, venture to assert that decorative illustra- 
tion can only be done in one way — if so, there would be an 
end in that direction to originality or individual feeling. 
There is nothing absolute in art, and one cannot dogmatise. 




A Voluptuary 

To rise, to take a little opium, to sleep till lunch, and after again to take a 
little opium, and sleep till dinner, that is a life of pleasure." 

Bv L. Ravtit Hill 



IN BLACK AND WHITE 281 

but it seems to me that in all designs certain conditions must 
be acknowledged, and not only acknowledged but accepted 
freely, just as one would accept the rules of a game before 
attempting to play it." In short, the desire of those il- 
lustrators who were at all conscious of any special desire 
as designers was for formality within the convention and 
circumstances of the printed book. 

Throughout the greater part of the century the tradition 
of the decorated book had been allowed to lapse. The 
actual renaissance of book decoration began when the leaders 
of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 
John Everett Millais and Holman Hunt, made their illustra- 
tions for the famous edition of Tennyson's Poems, published 
by Moxon in 1857. This book was not, however, a decorated 
book in the true sense, but its illustrations were essentially 
designs in spirit. The modern decorated book itself was 
not born until 1861, when Rossetti designed the title-page of 
his Early Italian Poets. No great enthusiasm was shown for 
the revived art, and for some years the deliberate arrange- 
ment of book illustrations in the form of design was practic- 
ally confined to the admirable series of children's books 
invented by Kate Greenaway and Walter Crane and, to 
some extent, those of Randolph Caldecott. During the late 
Eighties and early Nineties The English Illustrated Magazine 
helped to satisfy a growing taste for formal illustration, and 
Herbert Home and Selwyn Image anticipated somewhat the 
future glories of the Kelmscott and Vale presses, in the hand- 
some and dignified pages of The Hobby Horse. Then came 
the books of the presses named, as recorded in an earlier 
chapter, and presently publishers were competing with one 
another in the production of decorated books, a remarkable 
and distinguished number being issued during the years 
under review. 

It was Walter Crane more than any other artist who 
consistently and indomitably carried the torch of book 
decoration through the dark days preceding the full revival. 
Influenced by Durer and the early German wood-engravers, 
he developed mastery and individuality of his own. The 



282 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

decorative sense is given freedom in his work, with the result 
that his drawings are always uncompromising designs in 
strict relation to the book of which they become parts. 
There are no illustrated books of the Nineties which satisfy 
the demands of decorative art more eloquently than Crane's 
Faerie Queene, Reynard the Fox and The Shepherd's Calendar. 
In each of these the achievement is greater because the 
artist succeeds in freeing himself from the convention of the 
decorated manuscripts by fashioning his design to that of 
the modem printed page. He thus escaped the archaic tend- 
encies of William Morris and Burne Jones and became more 
definitely associated with the younger school of draughts- 
men who were striving to put the spirit of modernity into 
their work. His designs were also used in an effective series 
of Socialist cartoons, notable among which is the fine pro- 
cessional work "The Triumph of Labour," designed to 
commemorate the International Labour Day, 1st May 1891, 
and other examples of his black and white drawings are to be 
found on the covers of books, and in several notable devices 
for publishing and other trading concerns. 

Walter Crane's decorative drawings had a marked effect on 
the younger men of the period, but the influence stimulated 
the general decorative movement in regard to illustration 
rather than imitation of the master. 

Book decoration was striving to become modern at the 
time the Kelmscott Press was started just as vigorously 
as Morris strove to link it with tradition. There was no set 
contest between the conflicting ideas and the original Pre- 
Raphaelite, and Arts and Crafts influences were too recent 
for the clear definition of any line of demarcation by in- 
trinsically contending factions. The whole of the decorative 
revival was under the spell of Morris and the group of painters 
and poets who in turn influenced him. Walter Crane, 
though so closely associated with William Morris, came less 
under his influence as a book decorator than might have been 
expected, and both Charles Ricketts and C. H. Shannon 
worked out original ideas in design. So modem a designer 
as Aubrey Beardsley came, however, under the prevailing 




Illustration from '• 1 he Faerie Qveexe'' 

Bv li -alter Crane 



IN BLACK AND WHITE 283 

influence ; and Laurence Housman could hardly have decor- 
ated so well had not Morris and Ricketts preceded him. 
The arabesque borders of William Macdougal were more 
modern in spirit, though less satisfying in effect, and the 
happy pictures and head-pieces and tail-pieces of Charles 
Robinson, as well as the vigorous Japonesque decorations of 
Edgar Wilson, were altogether novel and appropriate, as 
were those also of H. Granville Fell. But it was R. Anning 
Bell who caught the more fanciful decorative spirit of the 
times with his drawings for A Midsummer's Nights' Dream 
(1895), and other books, including a volume of Keats' Poems. 
In these drawings Anning Bell departed from the luxuriant 
effects of Morris, Crane, Ricketts and Beardsley, and, work- 
ing in the realm of fancy, succeeded in producing illustra- 
tions which bridged the decorative and the pictorial methods, 
whilst retaining a designed balance with the printed page. 

Whilst the decoration of books was striving for modern 
expression in this country, the Scottish group of artists, 
working with Patrick Geddes at Edinburgh, produced many 
designs which were at once strong and new, although in 
some instances based in curious and remote arabesques of 
Runic origin. Symbolism was the aim of these artists, 
and the clever head-pieces and tail-pieces of Tlie Evergreen 
were faithfully drawn "after the manner of Celtic orna- 
ment." Excellent and more illustrative designs were con- 
tributed to the same publication by Charles H. Mackie, 
Robert Burns, Pittendrigh Macgillivray and John Duncan. 
Later in the period the fantastic work of Jessie M. King 
came from Scotland, revealing a novel sense of fanciful 
design based largely upon the Japanese and showing also 
the influence of Beardsley. Ireland produced no group of 
Celtic designers, but the work of Althea Giles, with its 
curiously exotic S3mibolism, won the enthusiastic apprecia- 
tion of W. B. Yeats, and the poet's brother. Jack Yeats, 
began to make those excellent and deUghtful wood-blocks 
which have all the qualities of designs without losing any of 
the characteristics of pictures. Nor had definite symbolism 
in black and white decorative art many exponents in this 



284 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

country. The most notable, and he comes hardly within 
the definition of a decorator, was W. T. Horton, who, with 
extraordinary economy of materials, the briefest of lines and 
the flattest masses of black, produced startling revelations 
of human types in the very few designs he published. 

A notable contribution to the ornamental book decora- 
tions of the period was made by a group of artists in the 
Midlands, Originally students at the Birmingham School of 
Art, these young men and women, inspired by the work and 
ideals of the elder group of the Arts and Crafts movement, 
worked diligently within the limits of conventional design. 
They discountenanced any book illustrations of a realistic 
type by relegating these to the portfolio or the picture frame. 
Many books of fairy tales, old romances and poetry were 
decorated by them, with varying success, and their aims 
and aspirations were set forth in a magazine of their own, 
called The Quest. William Morris thought so highly of the 
Birmingham School of decorators that he engaged three of 
its draughtsmen, E. H. New, C. M. Gere and Arthur Gaskin, 
to design illustrations for some of the Kelmscott Press books. 
In the main the artists of this school had little connection 
with modern life. The bulk of their designs were deliber- 
ately archaic, being based upon the work of the fifteenth 
and sixteenth century wood-engravers, and what modern 
spirit they possessed was little more than an echo of the 
Pre-Raphaelite movement and its associates and dependants. 
Among the more notable members of the group, besides the 
three artists named above, were Inigo Thomas, Henry Payne, 
L. Fairfax Muckley, Bernard Sleigh, Mary Newill, Celia 
Levetus and Mrs Arthur Gaskin. There can be small doubt, 
however, that the most satisfying and most original draughts- 
man of the group was E. H. New. His studies of old streets 
and buildings united the ideas of book decoration and illus- 
tration in a successful and altogether pleasing way, and they 
remain something more than the expressions of a revived 
method of decoration. 

The revival of conventional book decoration did not pass 
unchallenged, as may be imagined at a time when there were 



IN BLACK AND WHITE 285 

so many vigorous black and white artists of all types striving 
for recognition. One of the most authoritative and most 
reasonable pronouncements of the opposition was that made 
by Joseph Pennell in the 1897 edition of Pen Drawing and Pen 
Draughtsmen. "Decoration is appropriateness," he wrote, 
" and it really makes no difference whether it is realistic 
or conventional, so long as it improves the appearance 
of the page. But at the same time I consider the modern 
thoroughly developed realistic work in its best form superior 
to that of the old men, because it shows most plainly the 
advances we have made in knowledge and technique. . . . 
Nowhere for the moment will such a statement be questioned, 
except in this country. But here, within the last thirty 
years, people have been continuously taught to believe that 
book decoration, like all other art work, to be artistic must 
have a spiritual, moral, social, political, literary or sixteenth- 
century value, while beauty of line and perfection of execu- 
tion have been subordinated to these qualities ; as a result 
the many pay no attention to the real artistic merits or 
defects of a drawing, but simply consider it from an entirely 
inartistic standpoint. The excuse is the elevation of the 
masses and the reformation of the classes. Art will never 
accomplish either of these desirable ends, its only function 
being to give pleasure, but this pleasure will be obtained 
from good work produced in any fashion. If the work is 
equally well, or, as usually happens, better done in a modern 
style, it will give more pleasure to a greater number simply 
because it will be far more widely understood." But the 
distinction was not finally between realistic and conventional 
decoration ; it was between the ideas of decoration in the 
abstract and illustration in the abstract. During the 
Nineties there were few naturalistic decorators of books, and 
this was due probably to the emphasis which had been laid 
upon the independence of all naturalistic art from anything 
but its own materials and its own rules of excellence. The 
problem of filling the space of a book-page in such a way as 
to produce harmony and pleasing proportion was therefore 
left to the decorative reformers who, to a man, were inspired 



286 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

by a mediaeval idea. The results are to be seen in the archaic 
but admirably illustrated books of the time, which, in their 
own realm of decoration, are sufficient defences against any 
criticism that has been, or may be, passed upon them. 

The other branch of the art was none the less remarkable 
in its own sphere, and under conditions of almost unlimited 
personal freedom in choice of method it naturally encouraged 
originality undreamt of (and seemingly undesired) in the 
purely decorative schools. Every phase of life found its 
pictorial exponents, in spite of the serious limitations im- 
posed by the introduction of photography into press and 
book illustrations. Where the camera could not operate, in 
for instance the realm of character study and humour, the 
modern genius for pen drawing produced surprising and 
masterly results. The most notable of these, and admittedly 
the finest pen draughtsmanship of the time, were the 
drawings of Phil May. 

This universally appreciated artist, born at New Wortley, 
Leeds, in 1864, was the son of an engineer. His earliest 
ambition was to be a jockey, but the wish was not gratified, 
for when quite a child he was employed as timekeeper in a 
foundry. There were theatrical associations in the family 
on his mother's side, and these led to the boy, whose aptitude 
with the pencil developed early, being employed as an assist- 
ant scene painter and odd- job boy at a Leeds theatre. 
Subsequently he became an actor, playing juvenile parts in 
a touring company. At the age of fifteen he set out for 
London and fortune, but hardship drove him back to Leeds, 
where he practically began his association with pictorial 
journalism by contributing drawings to a local paper called 
Yorkshire Gossip). He married at the early age of nineteen, 
and again returned to try his fortune in London, where ill 
luck greeted him once more. After suffering extreme 
poverty, a caricature of his, depicting Bancroft, Irving and 
Toole leaving the Garrick Club, which was published by a 
print-seller in Charing Cross Road, attracted the attention of 
Lionel Brough, the actor, who bought the original and intro- 
duced May to the editor of Society. This led to work and 



s* 




Phii. May 

By S/>y 



IN BLACK AND WHITE 287 

opened up avenues for the further development of his career 
in the pages of The St Stephen's Review, where some of the 
best of his early drawings appeared. But the artist's health 
broke down, and he was forced to leave England for Australia, 
There he remained from 1885 to 1888, becoming one of the 
most popular contributors to The Sydney Bulletin. On his 
return to Europe he studied art for a while in Paris, and from 
there renewed his connection with The St Stephen's Review, 
contributing his first popularly successful series of drawings, 
"The Parson and the Painter." This series appeared as a 
book in 1891. When he returned to London in 1892 he 
found himself a famous humorous artist, and started the 
immensely popular Winter Annuals, which were published 
regularly for eleven years. He now contributed drawings 
to many papers, including The Graphic, The Daily Graphic. 
The Pall Mall Budget, The Sketch, Pick-me-up, and in 1896 
he joined the staff of Punch. Among his more important 
separate publications were, Phil May's Sketch Book (1895) ; 
Guttersnijjes (1896) ; Graphic Pictures (1897) ; Fifty Hitherto 
Unpublished Pen and Ink Sketches and The Phil May Album 
(1899). During the greater part of this time Phil May was 
the undisputed king of pictorial humorists in this country. 
His sketches were a characteristic of the period, and prob- 
ably no other black and white artist ever won such ungrudg- 
ing appreciation from both his brother artists and all classes 
of the public. So severe a critic as Whistler said : " Modern 
Black and White Art could be summed up in two words — 
Phil May." His weekly contributions to Punch came to be 
anticipated and discussed as a pleasurable event of the first 
order. This high fame was practically achieved and concluded 
in the Nineties, for Phil May died in 1903, just before entering 
his fortieth year. After his death several volumes of his 
drawings were published, including Sketches from Punch and 
A Phil May Picture Book (1903) ; and a Folio of Caricature 
Drawings and Sketches and Phil May in Australia (1904). 

The two outstanding qualities of Phil May's drawings are 
their simplicity and their humour. No draughtsman before 
him had ever succeeded in expressing so much with such 



288 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

apparent ease and such economy of means. He translated 
the brevity of wit into black and white art, for although he 
was fundamentally a humorist, and often a humorist of a 
very primitive type, the most successful of his drawings are 
as witty as they are funny. His capacity for wit is also 
revealed in those early caricatures of his, which, if they had 
been continued, would have won him fame in another 
direction. But it is as a humorous artist that he will be 
remembered and loved. Not since Charles Keene had the 
distinctive qualities of our native humour been caught with 
such unerring exactitude and force. At the same time May 
achieved a far greater versatility than Keene. His mind 
ranged over every phase of the life of his time, and his amaz- 
ing skill recorded the funniness of Whitechapel or Mayfair 
with equal inevitability. The wonderful simplicity of these 
drawings augmented their popular success, and it provoked 
as well an equally persistent legend about his art, for it was 
customary to attribute May's simplicity of line to the belief 
that whilst he was in Australia he was forced to evolve a 
simple method of drawing owing to the limitations of local 
reproductive processes. This illusion had no basis in fact, 
for the style was as much the man in Phil May's case as in 
that of any other artist of equal skill. " For May's view of 
life," wrote his friend and fellow-artist, G. R. Halkett, " with 
its sharp emphasis of character, and its expression always of 
the type rather than the individual, an overloading of detail 
would mean, even in its completeness, a lack of certainty 
and a halting expression of his idea. In the result. May's 
work was always that of the brilliant sketcher who records 
only those essentials which express ' the soul ' of the object 
before him. The accessories he put behind him with no lack 
of appreciation, and certainly with no lack of study, because 
he was concerned with deeper things, from which, with unerr- 
ing instinct, he knew how to discard the merely superfluous. " 
Next to the directness of his appeal the easy familiarity of 
his humour made him universally acceptable. It was funda- 
mental, primitive and native humour, reflecting feelings 
which exist in most adults without respect to class or opinion. 







A Lecture in Store 

' /Irf vou comin' ome V " , . , , , '^ ■ " 

Vn do ellythlkt you /He in reason, M'ria-(hic)-but I it'on t come ome. 
By Phil May 



IN BLACK AND WHITE 289 

And above all it was easier of acceptance because of its 
whole-hearted geniality and amiable tolerance of human 
foibles. It never aroused superior laughter ; cynicism was 
as absent as attempt to score off the inferiorities of others ; 
one could laugh and feel comfortable with him, as one could 
with, say, Charles Dickens or Dan Leno. Phil May made 
his appreciators feel as they looked and laughed at one of 
his quaint or preposterous creations that "there, but for the 
grace of God, go I." By making you laugh with him at 
something he had observed or imagined he thus forced you 
to laugh good-humouredly and with amiable fatalism at 
yourself. But in spite of all this undoubted geniality the 
subject of his humour was more often than not fitter for tears 
than laughter. His " guttersnipes, " his ragamuffins, and all 
the degraded and unfortunate class- less folk he delineated 
with such genius in all sorts of laughable situations, might 
just as easily have been the subjects of weeping or, better, of 
wrath. In some of the finest of these drawings the humour 
miscarries in the triumph of a tragic realism ; and in most of 
his studies of low life— studies of drunkards, ragged, dirty 
and half-starved children, inept old men and unkempt women 
of all ages — the laughter provoked can be little more than 
the protective covering of merriment against the pains of 
impotent sympathy. How far Phil May felt this paradox 
of his own, and, perhaps, all humour, we do not know ; but 
the misfortunes of his own life, due mainly to personal foibles, 
must have developed in him that kindly and indifferent 
fatalism which pervades his work. 

The best of the new men worked for Pick-me-up in its earl}'- 
days, and also for The Butterfly and Eureka, and in those 
publications realism, satire, humour, cjoiicism and caricature 
flourished with all the spritehness of a lively age and keen 
artistic enthusiasm. In many directions one can trace the 
influence of Phil May both in technique, which is chiefly the 
concern of the draughtsmen themselves, and in point of view. 
But many artists developed a metier of their own, and most 
of them had sufficient originality of technique and subject 
to arouse critical interest. The renaissance of black and 



290 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

white drawing was not, however, confined to the regular 
artists in that medium, it gained supporters from among 
painters, many of whom, such as Dudley Hardy, Walter 
Sickert, Maurice Greiffenhagen and Sidney H. Sime, doing 
work which held its own among the best work of the regular 
pen and pencil draughtsmen. And in this connection the 
long series of lithographic portraits by William Rothenstein ^ 
must be remembered, and the early line-drawn caricatures of 
Max Beerbohm. Cecil Aldin was contributing clever animal 
studies in wash to the popular illustrated journals, and etchers 
like Joseph Pennell and painter-etchers like Alfonse Legros 
and William Strang made incursions into the popular realms 
of black and white illustrations ; and even so essential a 
colourist as Charles Conder came under the same spell. 

Variety was a marked characteristic of the black and white 
art of the Nineties, and it has to be admitted that apart from 
the two main schools of illustration — the decorative and the 
illustrative, which correspond with the romantic and realistic 
schools of painting — little of the work was other than normal, 
and, save for the circumstances of the moment, possible dur- 
ing any recent decade. Individual talent, of course, had its 
say in all directions, and every manifestation of genius and 
skill found appreciators. The list of draughtsmen whose 
work is distinctive after the critical winnowing of more than 
fifteen years, and, in some instances, twenty, is still impres- 
sive, including, as it does, such names as Raven Hill, C. E. 
Brock, F. H. Towiisend, G. R. Halkett, Frank L. Emanuel, 
H. R. Millar, E. J. Sullivan, R. Spence, O. Eckhardt, A. S. 
Hartrick, Gilbert James, J. W. T. Manuel, Hilda Cowham, 
E. T. Reed, Charles Pears, Patten Wilson and Bernard 
Partridge, all of whom either published their first work 
during the decade or produced such good work as to give 
them repute. And in addition to this varied array of ability 
newer men were also coming forward. Among these may be 
named Henry Ospovat, Carton Moore Park, Gordon Craig, Dion 
Clayton Calthrop and Joseph Simpson, each of whom published 

^ For an account of these lithographs see " The Lithographic Por- 
traits of Will Rothenstein '■ in the author's Romance and Reality. 




The Franks of the Stvx 
By S. H. Sinn- 



IN BLACK AND WHITE 291 

their early work at the close of the period, but whose main 
work in varied directions belongs to succeeding decades. 

All the ideas and "movements " of the time had their 
devotees among the black and white artists — decadence in 
Aubrey Beardsley, realism in Phil May, Raven Hill and 
J. W. T. Manuel ; romanticism in Maurice Greiffenhagcn, 
and that urbanity which I have dealt with under the heading 
of "The New Dandyism," in Max Beerbohm, Dion Clayton 
Calthrop and others. Besides these phases there were 
several artists who combined the realistic and romantic 
points of view in their work, and, in the true spirit of the 
moment's complex intellectualism, added to it that cynicism 
and doubt of convention which characterises so much of 
modern thought. Chief among these artists stands Sydney 
H. Sime, whose contributions to Pick-me-up, The Butterfly, 
Eureka and The Idler reveal one of the most original and 
most gifted artists of the time. 

All the varieties oH fin de siecle black and white drawing 
found a capable and prodigal exponent in this artist, who 
was equally at home with pen, pencil or brush. Few artists 
of the time had his versatility, and still fewer his mental 
range. His line drawings illustrating " Jingle's " theatrical 
notes in Pick-me-up reveal not only a draughtsman of dis- 
tinction, but an exact observer of life, and a humorist to 
boot; some of his covers for Eureka, particularly the "White- 
eyed Kaffir," prove that he might have won fame as a poster 
designer had he wished, whilst his little landscapes in the 
mediimi of wash, which appeared from time to time in The 
Butterfly, have all the qualities of fine pastel-work. But 
the phase of Sime's work which most nearly expresses a 
distinctive mood of the period is that which reveals him as 
a sardonic critic of humanity and conventional faith. 

From time to time he published drawings in Pick-me-up, 
and elsewhere, which represented a new type of caricature 
for this country. He could, and did, caricature personality 
in the traditional manner ; but, interesting as these works 
proved to be, they were not sufficiently distinctive to com- 
mand more than passing attention. His outstanding work 



292 THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES 

in caricature was independent of personality. It did not 
pass satiric or humorous comment upon this or that man of 
note ; it said its say about man as man, and about man's 
most cherished ideas and behefs. Sime once described 
caricature as in the nature of a sarcastic remark, and there 
is sarcasm enough in these irreverent drawings of his. But 
neither sarcasm nor irreverence is their aim or outcome. 
They are obviously the work of an artist and thinker, of one 
who did not choose to mask his contempt of human weak- 
ness. His satires of Heaven and Hell, funny as they are, do 
not end as jokes. He sees in these popular conceptions of 
the hereafter mere substitutes for thought and imagination 
and courageous living, and his attitude resembles that of 
Rudyard Kipling in "Tomlinson," which work, signifioantly 
enough, he desired above all things to illustrate, although he 
never produced more than two or three drawings towards 
that end. 

The restless spirit of the time thus found varied expression 
in its black and white art. From Phil May's laughter at 
tragedy to Sime's laughter at humanity is a far cry ; and it 
is still further to Aubrey Beardsley's decorated cynicism. 
Yet each point of view is typical of the period, each in its 
way an expression of that thirst for reality which character- 
ised the whole art work of the decade. 

In the work of no single artist was a final interpretation 
of reality attained. The art of the time was perhaps too 
personal for that ; just as it was too personal for work within 
prescribed conventions or formalities. The age favoured 
experiment and adventure, and it even looked not unkindly 
upon the various whims of the inquisitive, on the assumption 
doubtless that discovery was as often the result of accident 
as of design. In this large tolerance the spirit of renaissance 
worked through mind and imagination inspiring artists with 
a new confidence in themselves and courage to take risks. 
The results were not always happy ; but that does not make 
the spirit in which the risks were taken less admirable, for 
those who make great effort contribute to life as well as 
those who achieve. 



INDEX 



About the Theatre, by William 

Archer, 207 
Academy, The, 169-170 
Achurch, Janet, 207-208 
Adams, Francis, 34 
Addison, Joseph, 41, 121 
" A.E." (see George Russell) 
jEschylus, 167 
Esthetic movement, 28, 67 
A hob and Jezebel, by Oscar Wilde, 80 
Albert, Prince, 100 
Aldin, Cecil, 290 
Allen, Grant, 21, 28-29, 35. 39. 4°. 

44, 131, 147-148, 151-152, 216 
Almanack of Twelve Sports, by 

W. E. Henley, illustrated by 

William Nicholson, 274 
Almayer's Folly, by Joseph Conrad, 

225 
" An Artist in Attitudes," 81 
Angelo, Michael, 139 
Anthem of Earth, by Francis 

Thompson, 175-176 
Archer, Charles, 207 
Archer, William, 157-158, 205, 207, 

208, 213 
A Rebours, by J. K. Huysmans, 28, 

59, 61-62 
Arms and the Man, by Bernard 

Shaw, 194 
Arnold, Matthew, 128 
Art Workers' Guild, 246 
Arts and Crafts Essays, 245, 256 
Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, 

246 
Arts and Crafts Exhibition, 253 
Arts and Crafts movement, 244-247, 

267, 280, 284 
Ashbee, C. R., 265 
Auld Licht Idylls, by J. M. Barrie, 

224 
Autobiography of a Boy, The, by 

G. S. Street, 41, 67-69, 228 
Aveling, Eleanor Marx, 207 
Aylwin, by Theodore Watts- 

Dunton, 39 

Bailey, Philip James, 38 

Balestier, Wolcot, 232 

Ballad of an Artist's Wife, The, by 
John Davidson, 187 

Ballad of a Nun, The, by John 
Davidson, 187 

Ballad of Heaven, A, by John 
Davidson, 188 

Ballad of Hell, The, by John 
Davidson, 187 

Ballad of Reading Gaol, The, by 
Oscar Wilde, 80, 82-83, 88-89 

Ballads and Songs, by John David- 
son, 178, 181 



Ballantyne & Hanson, 265 

Balzac, 74, 87 

Baptist Lake, by John Davidson, 178 

Baring-Gould, S., 250 

Baring, Maurice, 48 

Barker, Granville, 214-215 

Barlow, Jane, 225 

Barrack-Room Ballads, by Rud- 
yard Kipling, 232, 241 

Barrie, J. M., 35, 40, 42, 224-225, 
227-228 

Bashkirtseff, Marie, 206 

Battle of the Bays, The, by Owen 
Seaman, 159 

Bauble Shop, The, by Henry 
Arthur Jones, 209 

Baudelaire, Charles, 61, no, in, 
136, 143, 160, 196, 201 

Beardsley, Aubrey, 17, 21, 23, 34, 
37, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50, 59, 60, 63, 
76, 91-104, III, 114-115, 117, 
130-131, 137-138, 142, 143, 186, 
268, 273, 280, 282, 290-292 

Beardsley, The Last Letters of Aubrey, 

94 
Beardsley, Miss Mabel, 92 
" Beardsley Craze," 93 
Beardsley woman, the, 46, 93 
Bcccarius, by Max Beerbohm, 117 
Becke, Louis, 225 
Beeching, H. C, 159 
Beerbohm, Max, 17, 20, 25, 30, 35, 

41, 45, 48, 50, 97, 102, 108, 112, 

116, 1 17-125, 130, 197, 229, 291 
Beerbohm, The Works of Max, 41, 

118-120, 123 
Beers Company, the De, 238 
Beggarstaff Brothers, 34, 274-275 
Bell, R. Anning, 47, 283 
Beltaine, 150 
Bending of the Bough, The, by 

George Moore, 149 
Benson, Arthur Christopher, 40, 47 
Benson, E. F., 224 
Benson, F. R., 212 
Benson, W. A. S., 251 
Berneval-sur-Mer, 80 
Bernhardt, Sarah, 76 
Besant, Annie, 26 
Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush, by 

Ian Maclaren, 225 
Binyon, Laurence, 45, 51, 109, 159 
Birmingham School of Art, 284-285 
Bjornson, Bjornstjerne, 133, 209 
Black, William, 39 
Black Cat, The, 209 
Blake, William, 50, 91, 99, 167. ^74 
Bland, Hubert, 26 
Blatchford, Robert, 24, 44 
Blind, Mathilde, 50 
Blomfield, Reginald, 251 



294 



INDEX 



Bodley, G. F., 251 

Bodley Head, The, 41, 45, 76, 119, 
186 

Bogland Studies,hy Jane Barlow, 225 

Book Bills of Narcissus, The, by 
Richard le Gallienne, 226 

" Bon Mot " series, 103 

Booth, Charles, 44 

Bottomley, Gordon, 51 

Brand, by Henrik Ibsen, 209 

Brandes, George, 133 

Brangwyn, Frank, 268, 270, 276, 
277-278 

Bridges, Robert, 39 

Brieux, Eugene, 201 

British South Africa Company, 238 

Brock, C. E., 290 

Brooke, Emma Frances, 224 

Brooke, Stopford, 39 

Brown, Ford Madox, 246, 272 

Browning, Robert, 25, 38, 128, 157 

Bruce : a Drama, by John David- 
son, 178 

Buchanan, Robert, 128 

BuUen, Frank T., 225 

Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, 33, 100, 
103, 259-260, 273, 282 

Burns, John, 26 

Burns, Robert, 283 

Butler, Samuel, 203 

Butterfly, The, 36, 289, 291 

Byron, Lord, 57, 158 

Cadenhead, John, 150 

Caesar and Cleopatra, by Bernard 

Shaw, 195 
Cafe Royale, 58 
Caine, Hall, 39, 218, 226 
Caldecott, Randolph, 281 
Calthrop, Dion Clayton, 290-291 
Cameron, D. Y., 270 
Campbell, Mrs Patrick, 213 
Candida, by Bernard Shaw, 194 
Canterbury Poets, 52 
Cantervillc Ghost, The, by Oscar 

Wilde, 74 
Captain Brassbound's Conversion, 

by Bernard Shaw, 194 
Captains Courageous, by Rudyard 

Kipling, 232 
Caricatures of Twenty-five Gentle- 
men, by Max Beerbohm, 124 
Carlyle, Thomas, 203 
Carpenter, Edward, 34, 44, 48 
Carroll, Lewis, 227 
Carthusian, The, 117 
Carton, R. C, 214 
Case of Rebellious Susan, The, by 

Henry Arthur Jones, 212 
Cashel Byron's Profession, by 

Bernard Shaw, 194 



Caslon, 235 

Caxton, William, 260 

Celtic revival, 42, 147-156 

Celtic Twilight, The, by W. B. 

Yeats, 42, 149, 155 
Chamberlain, Joseph, 151, 238-239 
Chameleon, The, 36 
Champneys, Basil, 251 
Chant, Mrs Ormiston, 24 
Chap-Book, The, 118 
Charrington, Charles, 207-208 
Chesterton, G. K., 112 
Child of the J ago, A, by Arthur 

Morrison, 43, 130, 216 
Children of the Ghetto, by Israel 

Z an g will, 225 
Chiswick Press, 255, 257 
Chord, The, 36 
Christ in Hades, by Stephen Phillips, 

158, 164 
Christmas Day in the Workhouse, 

by G. R. Sims, 187 
Christmas Garland, A, by Max 

Beerbohm, 120 
Chronicle, The Daily, 24, 80 
City of Dreadful Night, The, by 

Rudyard Kipling, 232 
Clarion, The, 24 
Clausen, George, 270 
Clifford, Mrs W. K., 224 
Cobden-Sanderson, T. J., 251, 253, 

260, 266 
Cockerell, Douglas, 251 
Coleridge, S. T.. 58, 158 
Collins, Lottie, 31 
Colour of Life, The, by Alice 

Meynell, 139, 145 
Colvin, Sydney, 39 
Comte, 60 

Comus, by John Milton, 58 
Conder, Charles, 35, 37, 48, 50, 131, 

270, 273-274 
Confessions of a Young Man, by 

George Moore, 63 
Conrad, Joseph, 40, 50, 225 
Coppee, Francois, 178 
Corelli, Marie, 225 
Couch, Arthur Quiller, 35, 225 
Countess Kathleen, The, by W. B. 

Yeats, 41, 149, 156 
Courting of Dinah Shadd, The, by 

Rudyard Kipling, 232 
Crackanthorpe, Hubert, 35, 47, 131, 

142, 144, 220, 223 
Craig, Gordon, 51, 207, 290 
Crane, Stephen, 229 
Crane, Walter, 33, 48, 251, 280-283 
Crashaw, Richard, 166 
Critic as Artist, The, by Oscar 

Wilde, 75 
Crockett, Alexander, 177 



INDEX 



295 



Crockett, S. R., 42, 150, 224 

Crosland, T. W. H., 51 

Cruelties of Prison Life, by Oscar 

Wilde, 80 
Custance, Olive, 48, 159 
Cyrenaicism, the New, 59 

Daily Express (Dublin), The, 150 

Daily Graphic, The, 287 

Daily Mail, The, 52 

Daily Telegraph, The, 208 

Dalmon, Charles, 48, 159 

D'Annunzio, Gabriele, 128 

Dante, 272 

D'Arcy, Ella, 48 

Darwinian idea, 190 

D'Aurevilly, Barbey, 13, iio-iii, 

114-115 
Davidson, Alexander, 177 
Davidson, John, 20, 35, 41, 45, 47, 

91, 106, 129, 131, 158, 177-192, 

234 
Davies, William H., 170 
Day's Work, The, by Rudyard 

Kipling, 232 
Decadents, The, 36 
Decameron, The, by Boccaccio, 102 
Decay of Lying, The, by Oscar 

Wilde, 75 
Decorative Illustration, by Walter 

Crane, 280 
Deemster, The, by Hall Caine, 225 
Defence of Cosmetics, A, by Max 

Beerbohm, 117 
Defence of the Revival of Printing, by 

Charles Ricketts, 261 
Degas, 203 

Degeneration, by Max Nordan, 195 
Dent, J. M., 93 
Departmental Ditties, by Rudyard 

Kipling, 231, 232 
De Profundis, by Oscar Wilde, 

80-81, 88 
De Quincey, Thomas, 167 
Devil's Disciple, The, by Bernard 

Shaw, 195 
Dial, The, 257, 260, 261 
Diarmuid and Crania, by W. B. 

Yeats and George Moore, 149 
Diary of Lady WiUoughby, by 

Hannah Mary Rathbone, 255 
Dickens, Charles, 33, 43, 107, 217, 

289 
Dionysos, 58 
Dobson, Austin, 39 
Doll's House, A, by Henrik Ibsen, 

208-209 
Dome, The, 36, 50-51 
" Don't Read This if You Want to 

be Happy To-day," by Oscar 

Wilde, 80 



D'Orsay, Count, 122 

Douglas, Lord Alfred, 76, 159 

Douglas, Sir George, 150 

Doves Press, 255, 266 

Dow, T. Millie, 270 

Dowie, Menie Muriel, 224 

Dowden, Edward, 39 

Dowson, Ernest, 35, 48, 58, 70, 91, 

158, 162, 166 
Doyle, Arthur Conan, 40, 225 
Dream Days, by Kenneth Graham, 

227 
Dream Tryst, by Francis Thompson, 

167 
Dublin Review, The, 167-168 
Duchess of Padua, The, by Oscar 

Wilde, 75 
Du Maurier, George, 39, 67, 226, 279 
Duncan, John, 150, 283 
Durer, Albrecht, 281 

Eagle and the Serpent, The, 129-130 
Early Italian Poets, by D. G. 

Rossetti, 281 
Ebb-Tide, The, by Robert Louis 

Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne, 

225 
Echegaray, 209 
Eckhardt, O., 290 
Egerton, George, 45, 47, 129, 143, 

144, 217, 224 
Eglinton, John, 42, 149 
Elder Conklin and Other Stories, by 

Frank Harris, 43 
Eliot, George, 217 
Ellis, Havelock, 50, 129, 221 
Elsmere, Robert, by Mrs Humphry 

Ward, 224 
Emanuel, Frank L., 290 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 132 
Emperor and Galilean, by Henrik 

Ibsen, 208 
Endymion, by John Keats, 58 
Enemy of the People, An, by 

Henrik Ibsen, 209-210 
English Episodes, by Frederick 

Wedmore, 39 
English Illustrated Magazine, 281 
English People, Modern History of, 

by R. H. Gretton, 53 
Episodes, by G. S. Street, 144 
Eragny Press, 255 
Esperance Girls' Club, 250 
Essex House Press, 255, 265-266 
Esther Waters, by George Moore, 

43. 63, 130, 216, 228-230 
Eureka, 36, 289, 291 
Euripides, 212 
Evans, Frederick H., 93 
Evelyn Innes, by George Moore, 

230 



296 



INDEX 



Eve of St Agnes, The, by John 

Keats, 58 
Evergreen, I'he, 36, 43, 150, 283 

Fabian Essays in Socialism, 194 
Fabianism and the Empire, by 

Bernard Shaw, 195 
Fabian Society, the, 26, 186, 194, 

200, 209 
Faerie Queene, by Edmund 

Spenser, 281 
Farrar, Archdeacon, 38 
Fathers and Children, by Ivan 

Turgenev, 132 
Fat Woman, The, by Aubrey 

Beardsley, 1 01 -102 
Fell, H. Granville, 283 
Fenn, Frederick, 214 
Fergusson, John Duncan, 35, 270 
Feverel, The Ordeal of Richard, by 

George Meredith, 123 
Field, Michael, 45, 159, 209 
Fitzgerald, Edward, 135 
Fleet Street Eclogues, by John 

Davidson, 41, 106, 178 
Fleet Street Eclogues, by John 

Davidson (second scries), 178 
Fleet Street and Other Poems, by 

John Davidson, 178 
Fleming, George, 144 
Fleshly School of Poetry, The, by 

Robert Buchanan, 128 
Fortnightly Review, The, 28, 74, 147 
Fletcher, A. E., 24 
Florentine Tragedy, A, by Oscar 

Wilde, 75 
Forbes, Stanhope, 270 
Forest Lovers, The, by Maurice 

Hewlett, 226 
For the Crown, by John Davidson, 178 
Fowler, Robert, 270, 273, 276 
Fragonard, 274 
France, Anatole, 48, 206 
Frederic, Harold, 226 
French Revolution, 57 
Froude, James Anthony, 38 
Fry. Roger, 51 
P'urniss, Harry, 280 
Furse, Charles W., 47 
Futurists of Milan, 188 

Gale, Norman, 45 

Galsworthy, John, 214 

Galton, Francis, 38 

Garden Cities of To-morrow, by 

Ebenezcr Howard, 254 
Garnett, Richard, 47 
Gaskin, Arthur, 284 
Gaskin, Mrs Arthur, 284 
Gautier, Theophile, 58, 61, 70, 85, 

III, 136, 160, 196 



Geddes, Patrick, 42, 150, 283 
Gentle Art of Making Enetnies, The, 

by James McNeill Whistler, 40 
George IV. (caricature of), 48 
George, D. Lloyd, 151, 239 
Gere, C. M., 284 
Geroniius, The Dream of, by John 

Henry Newman, 68 
Ghetto Tragedies, by Israel Zangwill, 

225 
Ghosts, by Henrik Ibsen, 194, 208 
Gide, Andre, 72, 78-79 
Gibson, Wilfred Wilson, 51 
Gilbert and Sullivan, 73 
Gilbert, W. S., 67, 73, 118 
Gilchrist, Murray, 229 
Giles, Althea, 51, 283 
Gissing, George, 27, 35, 39, 43, 223, 

229 
Glasgow Herald, The, 178 
Glasgow School, 269-270 
Gods and Fighting Men, by Lady 

Gregory, 149 
Golden Age, The, by Kenneth 

Graham, 227 
Goncourt, Edmund and Jules de, 58 
Gordon, General, 237 
Gosse, Edmund, 38, 47, 50, 207 
Goya, by W. Rothenstein, 277 
Graham, R. B. Cunninghame, 35, 

44. 225 
Grahame, Kenneth, 45, 47, 227 
Grand, Sarah, 217, 224 
Graphic, The, 287 
Graphic Pictures, by Phil May, 287 
Gray, John, 94, 159, 166, 262 
Great God Pan, The, by Arthur 

Machen, 226-227 
Greenaway, Kate, 92, 281 
Green Carnation, The, by Robert 

Hichens, 41, 73, 79, 135, 139, 228 
Green Fire, by Fiona Macleod, 139 
Gregory, Lady, 42, 149 
Greiffenhagen, Maurice, 270, 273, 

276, 290 
Grein, J. T., 194, 205 
Gretton, R. H., 31 (footnote), 53 
Grey Roses, by Henry Harland, 139 
Grosvenor Gallery, 25, 270 
Grundy, Sidney, 78, 214 
Guest, Lady Charlotte, 151 
Guild of Handicraft, 265 
Gunga Din, by Rudyard Kipling, 187 
Gunnlang Saga, translated by 

William Morris, 257 
Guthrie, Sir James, 270 
Guttersnipes, by Phil May, 287 

HaCON & RiCKETTS, 5I, 257 

Haggard, Rider, 39 
Halkett, G. R., 288. 290 



INDEX 



297 



Hankin, St John, J 14 

Happy Hypocrite, The, by Max 

Beerbohm, 120, 123, 229 
Happy Prince and Other Talcs, The, 

by Oscar Wilde, 54, 89 
Hardie, M.P., Kcir, 26 
Hardy, Dudley, 47, 268, 270, 290 
Hardy, Thomas, 38, 40, 216, 221- 

222 223 
Hardy, The Art of Thomas, by 

Lionel Johnson, 38 
Harland, Henry, 35-36, 46, 47, 

131, 143, 144, 224, 229 
Harlot's House, The, by Oscar 

Wilde, 82, 83, 102 
Harmsworth, Alfred, 54 
Harraden, Beatrice, 224 
Harris, Sir Augustus, 275 
Harris, Frank, 43, 225, 228-229 
Harrison, Frederic, 38 
Hartrick, A. S., 36, 47-48, 290 
Hauptmann, Gerhardt, 210 
Hayes, Alfred, 47 
Headlam, Rev. Stewart, 26 
Heather Field, The, by Edward 

Martyn, 149 
Hedda Gabler, by Henrik Ibsen, 

194, 208-209 
Hedonism, The New, by Grant 

Allen, 21, 28-29 
Heinemann, William, 45 
Henley, William Ernest, 34, 38, 

108-109, 143. 267 
Henry, George, 270 
Henry & Co., 45, 129 
Herbert, George, 166 
Hernani, by Victor Hugo, 39, 207 
Hewlett, Maurice, 40, 226 
Hiatt, Charles, 274-275 
Hichens, Robert, 41, 73 
Hill, Raven, 36, 37, 280, 290-291 
Hind, C. Lewis, 170-172 
Hobbes, John Oliver, 35, 47, 144, 

224 
Hobby Horse, The, 36, 257, 281 
Holiday and Other Poems, by 

John Davidson, 178, 184 
Holmes, C. J., 51 
Hope, Anthony, 40 
Horace, 121 

Home, Herbert P., 257, 281 
Hornel, E. A., 35, 150, 270 
Hornung, E. W., 226 
Horton, William, T.. 50, 284 
Hound of Heaven, The, by Francis 

Thompson, 172-173 
House of Pomegranates, The, by 

Oscar Wilde, 74, 75, 88, 89, 260, 

262 
House of the Wolfings, The, by 

William Morris, 257 



Housman, A. E., 40, 45, 158, 164-165 
Housman, Laurence, 37, 47, 5I1 

158, 280, 283 
Howard, Ebenezer, 254 
Hudson, W. H., 40 
Hueffer, Ford Madox, 48 
Hugo, Victor, 178 
Humanitarian League, the, 186 
Hunt, Holman, 33, 281 
Hunt, Leigh, 41 
Huysmans, Joris Karl, 28, 58, 61, 

136, 223 
Huxley, Thomas Henry, 38 
Hyde, Dr Douglas, 42, 149 
Hyndman, Henry Mayers, 26, 134 

Ibsen, Henrik, 27, 128, 133, 194, 

196, 201-203, 205-212, 220 
Ibsenism, the Quintessence of, by 

Bernard Shaw, 44, 194, 198, 211 
Ideal Husband, An, by Oscar 

Wilde, 76, 88 
Idler, The, 36 
Idylls of the King, The, by Lord 

Tennyson, 100 
Illumination, by Harold Frederic, 

226 
Image, Selwyn, 50, 159, 257, 281 
Importance of Being Earnest, The, 

by Oscar Wilde, 76, 105-106 
Impossibilities of Anarchism, by 

Bernard Shaw, 195 
Impressionists, French, 198, 203, 

207, 244, 267-269, 272-273, 276 
In a Music Hall, by John David- 
son, 178 
In Black and White, by Rudyard 

Kipling, 232 
Independent Theatre, the, 205, 209 
Industrial Democracy, by Sidney 

and Beatrice Webb, 44 
Ingelow, Jane, 38 
Intentions, by Oscar Wilde, 75, 

85. 88 
In the Key of Blue, by John Ad- 

dington Symonds, 39, 262 
" Iota," 224 
Irish Literary movement, 42, 64, 

149-150 
Irish Melodies, by Thomas Moore, 

153 

Irish National Theatre, 42, 150 

Irving, Sir Henry, 211 

" Israfel," 51 

It's Never too Late to Mend, by 

■■■ Charles Reade, 196 

Jackson, T. G., 251 
Jacobs, W. W., 227 
James, Gilbert, 290 
James, Henry, 38, 47, 217, 223 



298 



INDEX 



Jameson, Dr, 238-239 

Jameson Raid, the, 23, 233 

Jefferies, Richard, 186 

Jenson, Nicholas, 256, 258 

Jerome, Jerome K., 40, 227 

" Jingle," 291 

Joan of Arc, The Procession of, by 

Aubrey Beardsley, 100 
John, Augustus, 270 
Johnson, Lionel, 35, 38, 45, 48, 131, 

141-142, 149, 158, 160-161, 166 
Johnson, Samuel, 41, 107, 115 
Jones and Evans, 93 
Jones, Henry Arthur, 209, 212-213 
Jude the Obscure, by Thomas 

Hardy, 39, 216-217, 221 
Jungle Books, The, by Rudyard 

Kipling, 232 
Just-so Stories, by Rudyard Kip- 

hng, 232 

" Kail Yard School," 42 

Keats, John, 58, 93, 95, 135, 158, 

165, 176, 185, 225 
Keene, Charles, 37, 279 
Kelmscott Press, 51, 248, 255-262, 

264-266, 281-284 
Kelmscott Press Books, 258-259, 

263, 266 
Keynotes, by George Egerton, 129, 

144 
Khartoum, Taking of, 237 
Khayyam, Omar, 135 
Kidson, Frank, 250 
Kim, by Rudyard Kipling, 232 
King of the Schnorrers, The, by 

Israel Zangwill, 225 
King, Jessie M., 283 
Kipling, Rudyard, 34, 35, 39, 43, 

54, 126, 158, 187, 218, 225, 231- 

243, 292 
Kiss of Judas, The, by Aubrey 

Beardsley, 10 1 
Kitchener, Lord, 237 
Krafft-Ebing, 102 
Kruger, Paul, 238 

Labour Party, Independent, 26 

Lady Windermere's Fan, by Oscar 
Wilde, 77, 133 

Lamb, Charles, 41, 107, 121, 123 

Lane, John, 35, 45, 51, 93, 119, i86, 
262 

Lang, Andrew, 38 

Lassalle, Ferdinand, 134 

Last Ballad, The, by John David- 
son, 178 

Last Feast of Fraima, The, by 
Alice Milligan, 149 

Lavery, John, 35, 270, 276-277 

Lawrence and Bullen, 45 



Lawrence, Emmeline Pethick, 250 

Lecky, W. E. H., 38 

Lee, Vernon, 144 

Leech, John, 37, 279 

Le Gallienne, Richard, 31, 35, 38, 

41, 45, 46, 47, 91, 106, 108, 139, 

142-144, 157, 159, 160, 163-164, 

226-228 
Legros, Alfonso, 290 
Leighton, Sir Frederick, 47 
L' Enfant Prodigue, 94 
Leno, Dan, 275, 289 
Lepage, Bastien, 270 
Lethaby, W. R., 251, 253 
Levetus, Celia, 284 
Leyland, Sir James, 268 
Liberty, 196 
Liddon, Canon, 38 
Light That Failed, The, by Rud- 
yard Kipling, 232, 234 
Lindsay, Sir Coutts, 270 
Lippincoti's Monthly Magazine, 75 
Little Minister, The, by J. M. 

Barrie, 224 
Little Novels from Italy, by Maurice 

Hewlett, 226 
Liza of Lambeth, by Somerset 

Maugham, 43, 130, 224 
Locksley Hall, by Lord Tennyson, 

128 
Lombroso, Cesare, 50 
London People, The Life and Labour 

of the, by Charles Booth, 45 
London Programme, The, by Sidney 

Webb, 44 
London Types, by W. E. Henley 

and William Nicholson, 274 
London Visions, by Laurence 

Binyon, 109-110 
London Voluntaries, by W. E. 

Henley, 108-109, 143 
Longmans & Co., 93 
Lord Arthur Saville's Crime, by 

Oscar Wilde, 74 
Love Songs of Connacht, The, by 

Douglas Hyde, 149 
Lowry, H. D., 144 
Lysistrata, by Aristophanes, 103 

Mabinogian, The, translated by 

Lady Charlotte Guest, 151 
" Mabon," 151 
Macdougal, William, 283 
Macgillivray, Pittendrigh, 150, 283 
Macgregor, W. Y., 270 
Mackie, Charles H., 283 
" Maffick," to, 39 
Mahdi, the, 237 
Maitland, 270 
Machen, Arthur, 226 
" Maclaren, Ian," 42, 225 



INDEX 



299 



Macleod, Fiona (see also William 

Sharp), 35, 42, 48, 51, 147, 150, 

226 
Mademoiselle de Maupin, by Theo- 

phile Gautier, 59 
Mademoiselle Miss, by Henry 

Harland, 144 
Maeterlinck, Maurice, 51, 132, 153, 

209-210 
Mccve, by Edward Martyn, 149 
Mafeking night, 54 
Major Barbara, by Bernard Shaw, 

200 
Mallarme, Stephane, 56, 61, 78 
Mallock, W. H., 38, 67 
Mammon and His Message, by 

John Davidson, 179 
Man of Destiny, The, by Bernard 

Shaw, 194 
Man and Superman, by Bernard 

Shaw, 199 
Manet, Eduard, 63, 99, 203, 268, 276 
Mann, Harrington, 270 
Mann, Tom, 26 
Manning, Cardinal, 38 
Manuel, J. W. T., 36, 290 
Margaret Ogilvy, by J. M. Barrie, 224 
Marillier, H. C, 97, 263 
Mavius the Epicurean, by Walter 

Pater, 118, 140 
Marriott- Watson, Rosamiwid, 159 
Marpessa, by Stephen Phillips, 158 
'Martian, The, by George du 

Maurier, 39 
Martineau, James, 38 
Martyn, Edward, 149 
Mary Glocester, The, by Rudyard 

Kipling, 187 
Marx, Karl, 134, 207 
Marxian theory, 194 
Masefield, John, 214 
Masks or Faces? by William 

Archer, 207 
Masks, The Truth about, by Oscar 

Wilde, 74 
Massacre of the Innocents, The, by 

Maurice Maeterlinck, 54 
Master Builder, The, by Henrik 

Ibsen, 209, 211 
Mathews, Elkin, 35, 45, 51, 93 
Maude, Aylmer, 250 
Maugham, W. Somerset, 43, 224, 225 
Maupassant, Guy de, 220, 223, 233 
May, Phil, 35, 36, 37, 50, 275, 280. 

287-292 
Melmoth, Sebastian, 80 
Melville, Arthur, 270 
Meredith, George, 38, 121, 135, 144, 

157. 223 
Merrie England, by Robert 

Blatchford, 44 



Merriman, Henry Seton, 225 

Merry England, 167 

Meynell, Alice, 35, 45, 141, 144-145, 
158, 168 

Meynell, Wilfrid, 168-169 

Midshipman Easy, by Cajjtain 
Marry at, 118 

Midsummer Night's Dream, by 
William Shakespeare, 58 

Millais, Sir John Everett, 281 

Millar, H. R., 290 

Milligan, Alice, 149 

Milton, John, 165 

Moliere, 213 

Monet, Claude, 139, 268 

Money-Coutts, F. B., 159, 164 

Monticelli, 274 

Moore, George, 27, 35, 39, 42, 47, 
48, 63, 64, 130, 135, 149, 209, 216- 
217, 223, 229-230, 267-269 

Moore, T. Sturge, 51, 159 

Moore, Tom, 153 

More, by Max Beerbohm, 120 

Morgan, William de, 251 

Morris, Lewis, 38 

Morris, May, 251 

Morris, William, 26, 33, 38, 39, 51, 
100, 103, 134, 157, 196, 244-254, 
256-261, 263-266, 280, 282-284 

Morrison, Arthur, 43, 130, 216, 223, 
225 

Morte d' Arthur, by Malory, illus- 
trated by Aubrey Beardsley, 93 

Mrs Warren's Profession, by Ber- 
nard Shaw, 194-196 

Mucldey, L. Fairfax, 284 

Murdoch, W. G. Blaikie, 33 

Murger, Henri, 226 

Napoleon, 57, 183 

Nation, The, 170 

National Observer, The, 22, 228-229 

Nature of Gothic, The, by John 
Ruskin, 246-247 

Naulahka, The, by Rudyard Kip- 
ling and Wolcot Balestier, 232 

Neal, Mary, 250 

Nesbit, E., 159 

Nettleship, J. T., 47 

New, E. H., 284 

New Age, The, 22, 24 

New Ballads, by John Davidson, 
178 

Newbolt, Henry, 40, 158 

New Century Theatre, 209 

New English Art Club, 269 

New Grub Street, The, by George 
Gissing, 43 

New Humour, The, 227 

Newill, Mary, 284 

Newlyn School, 270 



300 



INDEX 



New Poems, by Francis Thompson, 

169 
New Republic, The, by W. H. 

Mallock, 67 
New Review, The, 22 
Newman, John Henry, 38 
News from Nowhere, by William 

Morris, 39, 248 
Nicholson, William, 34, 35, 268, 

270, 274-275 
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 50, 61, 88, 128- 

129, 131-133, 182, 190, 203, 234 
Nigger of the Narcissus, The, by 

Joseph Conrad, 225 
Nineteenth Century, The, 75 
No. 5 John Street, by Richard 

Whiteing, 40, 43, 224 
" Nonconformist Conscience," 24, 

216 
Nordau, Max, 19-20, 30, 34, 195 
Nutt, David, 93 

O'Connor, T. P., 24 

Octopus, The, 118 

Of a Neophyte, by Aubrey Beards- 
ley, lOI 

Olivier, Sydney, 26 

" On Going to Church," by Ber- 
nard Shaw, 50, 204 

Once a Week, 37 

Orpen, William, 35, 270 

Osbourne, Lloyd, 225 

Ospovat, Henry, 290 

O'Sullivan, Vincent, 144, 222-223 

Outcast of the Islands, An, by 
Joseph Conrad, 225 

Pagan Review, The, 22 

Pageant, The, 41, 160 

Pain, Barry, 40, 225, 227 

Palace Theatre, 76, 120 

Pall Mall Budget, The, 118, 287 

Paolo and Francesca, by Stephen 

Phillips, 158 
Parade, The, 36 
Park, Carton Moore, 290 
Parnassiens, the, 59 
Parson and the Painter, The, by 

Phil May. 287 
Partridge, Bernard, 280, 290 
Passion of Mary, The, by Francis 

Thompson, 167 
Pater, Walter, 26, 34, 38, 59, 61, 

74. 87, 135, 140 
Patience, by W. S. Gilbert, 67, 73 
Paton, Sir Noel, 150 
Payn, James, 39 
Payne, Henry, 284 
Peacock Room, the, 268 
Pears, Charles, 290 
Pearson's Weekly, 77-78 



Pelleas and M6lisande, by Maurice 

Maeterlinck, 156 
Pen Drawing and Pen Draughtsmen, 

by Joseph Pennell, 285 
Pen, Pencil and Poison, by Oscar 

Wilde, 74 
Pennell, Joseph, 47, 50, 93, 98, 

285, 290 
Peploe, J. T., 35, 270 
Perfect Wagnerite, The, by Bernard 

Shaw, 195 
Perfervid, by John Davidson, 177, 

181 
Peter Ibhetson, by George du 

Maurier, 39 
Petronius, 107 
Phantom 'Rickshaw, The, by Rud- 

yard Kipling, 232 
Pharais, by Fiona Macleod, 42, 150 
Philanderer, The, by Bernard Shaw, 

194 
Phillips, Stephen, 51, 158, 164 
Phrases and Philosophies for the 

Use of the Young, by Oscar 

Wilde, 112 
Pick-me-up, 36, 37, 118, 287, 289- 

291 
Picture of Dorian Gray, The, by 

Oscar Wilde, 21-22, 27, 59, 62, 

63, 68, 75, 84, 88-89, 138, 228 
Pierrot of the Minute, The, by Ernest 

Dowson, 141 
Pillars of Society, by Henrik 

Ibsen, 202 
Pinero, Arthur W., 39, 40, 78, 207, 

209, 212-213 
Pissarro, 139 
Plain Tales from the Hills, by 

Rudyard KipUng, 231 
Platonic dialogue, 202 
Playhouse Impressions, by A. B. 

Walkley, 206 
Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, by 

Bernard Shaw, 44, 45, 195 
Podmore, Frank, 26 
Poe, Edgar Allan, 155 
Poems, by Francis Thompson, 169 
Poems by the Way, by William 

Morris, 258 
Poetry of the Celtic Races, The, by 

Ernest Renan, 151 
Poets' Corner, The, by Max Beer- 

bohm, 124 
Poets of the Younger Generation, 

by William Archer, 157-158 
Post-Impressionists, 269 
Poster, The, 36 
Poster Exhibition, 275 
Posters, 47 

Pour la Couronne, by Francois 
Coppee, 178 



INDEX 



301 



Pre-Raphaelite movement, 34, 58, 
244, 267, 272, 281, 284 

Prisoner of Zenda, The, by An- 
thony Hope, 226 

Prose Fancies, by Richard Ic 
GalUenne, 139, 142 

Prose Poems, by Oscar Wilde, 88, 89 

Prj^de, James, 34, 35, 268, 270, 274- 

275 
Psychopathia Sexualis, by Krafft- 

Ebing, 101-102 
Puck of Pook's Hill, by Rudyard 

Kipling, 232 
Pugh, Edwin, 225 
Punch, 36, 37, 67, 74, 287 
Purple Land that England Lost, The, 

by W. H. Hudson, 40-41 

Quarto, The, 36 

Queen's Romance, A, by John 

Davidson, 178 
Quest, The, 284 
Quest of the Gilt - edged Girl, The, 

228 
Quest of the Golden Girl, The, by 

Richard le Gallienne, 41, 226, 228 
Question of Memory, A, by Michael 

Field, 209 
Quilp, Jocelyn, 22 

Radford, Dolly, 47, 159 

Radford, Ernest, 159 

Random Itinerary, A, by John 

Davidson, 179 
Ransome, Arthur, 72 
Rape of the Lock, The, illustrated 

by Beardsley, 98, loi, 103 
Ray, Catherine, 207 
Reade, Charles, 196 
Reclus, filis6e, 150 
Red Deer, by Richard Jefferies, 186 
Reeves and Turner, 265 
Renaissance, The, by Walter Pater, 

28, 59-60 
Renaissance, The History of the 

Italian, by John Addington 

Symonds, 39 
Renaissance of the Nineties, The, 

by W. G. Blaikie Murdoch, 33 
Renan, Ernest, 147, 151-152, 154 
Renoir, 99 

Renunciations, by Frederick Wed- 
more, 39 
Review of Reviews, The, 24 
Reynard the Fox, 281 
Rhodes, Cecil, 54, 238-239 
Rhymers, Club, the, 115, 186 
Rhys, Ernest, 42, 48 
Richard Yea and Nay, by Maurice 

Hewlett, 226 
Richards, Grant, 45 



Ricketts, Charles, 34, 35, 37, 74, 
256, 260-262, 270, 273-274, 276, 
280, 282 

Ridge, Pett, 40, 225, 227 

Rimbaud, Arthur, 61, 63 

Roberts, Morley, 225 

Robertson, Forbes, 178 

Robins, Elizabeth, 224 

Robinson, Charles, 283 

Rodin, Auguste, 271 

Rodney Stone, by A. Conan Doyle, 226 

Romance and Reality, by Hol- 
brook Jackson, 290 

Romantic Farce, ^4, 178 

Romantic movement, the, 57 

Romaunt of the Rose, 100 

Roots of the Mountains, The, by 
William Morris, 39, 257 

Rops, Felicien, 103 

Rose Leaf, The, 36 

Rosmersholm, by Henrik Ibsen, 
194, 209 

Ross, Robert, 72, 80-81, 96 

Rossetti, Christina, 38 

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 58, 128, 
135. 157. 160, 162, 281 

Rothenstein, William, 35, 47, 50, 
270, 276-278, 296 

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 201 

Roussel, 270 

Royal Academy, 269 

Royal Scottish Academy, 269 

Runciman, John F., 51 

Runnable Stag, A , by John David- 
son, 185-186 

Ruskin, John, 34, 38, 135, 196, 203, 
244-245, 246, 267 

Russell (" A. E. "), George, 42, 149 

Ruy Bias, by Victor Hugo, 178 

St James's Theatre, 76 
Salisbury, Marquis of, 238 
Salom^, by Oscar Wilde, 84-85, 90 
Salome, Beardsley's illustrations to, 

103 
Sambourne, Linley, 280 
Samhain, 150 
Sanity of Art, The, by Bernard 

Shaw, 195 
Santayana, George, 159 
Sardou, 76 

Sargeant, John S., 270 
Saturday Review, The, 120, 195, 205 
Savoy, The, 17, 34, 35, 36, 45-46, 

48-49, 91, 118, 129, 204, 221 
Scaramouch in Naxos, by John 

Davidson, 178, 181 
School for Saints, The, by John 

Oliver Hobbes, 224 
Schopenhauer, 203 
Schreiner, Olive, 224 



802 



INDEX 



Scots Observer, The, 267 

Scott, Bailey, 251 

Scott, Clement, 208 

Scott Library, 52 

Scott, Sir Walter, 58 

Scribe, 76 

Seaman, Owen, 40, 159-160 

Second Mrs Tanqueray, The, by 

Arthur W. Pinero, 40, 209,213-214 
Secret Rose, The, by W. B. Yeats, 

155-156 
Secular Society, the, 174 
Sentences and Paragraphs, by John 

Davidson, 129, 179 
Sentimental Journey, by Laurence 

Sterne, 226 
Sentimental Tommy, by J. M. 

Barrie, 224 
Setoun, Gabriel, 150 
Seven Seas, The, by Rudyard 

Kipling, 232, 242-243 
Shakespeare, William, 165, 212, 272 
Shannon, Charles H., 35, 50, 270, 

273-274, 282 
Shannon, J. J., 35 
Sharp, Cecil, 250 
Sharp, William, 22, 30, 42 
Shavianism, the quintessence of, 

198-201 
Shaw, George Bernard, 26, 34, 35, 

44, 45, 50, 78, 112. 120, 131, 134, 

146, 193-204, 234 
Shaw, Norman, 251 
Shelley, P. B., 58, 158, 165, 169, 

174-175, 185 
Shelley, by Francis Thompson, 168 
Shepherd's Calendar, The, illus- 
trated by Walter Crane, 282 
Sherard, Robert H., 72, 79 
Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan 

Doyle, 226 
Shropshire Lad, A, by A. E. 

Housman, 45 
Sickert, Walter, 26, 47, 50, 270, 290 
Silverpoints, by John Gray, 262 
Sime, S. H., 36, 37, 270, 280, 290, 

291-292 
Simpson, Joseph, 290 
Sinner's Comedy, The, by John 

Oliver Hobbs, 224 
Sister Songs, by Francis Thomp- 
son, 168 
Sketch, The, 118, 287 
Sleigh, Bernard, 284 
Smith : a Tragic Farce, by John 

Davidson, 178 
Smithers, Leonard, 35, 45 
Social Democratic Federation, 26 
Socialism, 247-248 
Socialism in England, by Sidney 

Webb, 44 



Socialist Movement, 44 
Socialist Party, the British, 26 
Soldiers Three, by Rudyard Kip- 
ling, 231 
Some Emotions and a Moral, by 

John Oliver Hobbes, 144 
Sotd of Man, The, by Oscar Wilde, 

27, 88, 89, 134 
South African War, 53 
Speaker, The, 178, 267 
Spence, R., 290 
Spencer, Herbert, 38, 203 
Spenser, Edmund, 251 
Sphinx, The, by Oscar Wilde, 74, 

82-83, 260, 263 
Sphinx wjithout a Secret, The, by 

Oscar Wilde, 74 
Spirit Lamp, The, 22 
Spurgeon, Charles, 38 
Stage Society, 194, 2oq, 214 
Stalky & Co., by Rudyard Kipling, 

232 
Star, The, 24, 193 
Stead, W. T., 24 
Steele, Sir Richard, 41 
Steer, Wilson, 35, 47, 270 
Steevens, G. W., 40 
Stephen, Leslie, 38 
Stephens, Riccardo, 150 
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 38, 135, 

225, 227 
Stickit Minister, The, by S. R. 

Crockett, 224 
Stirner, Max, 132 
Stones of Venice, The, by John 

Ruskin, 246 
Story of an African Farm, The, by 

Ralph Iron (Olive Schreiner), 224 
Story of the Gadsbys, The, by 

Rudyard Kipling, 232 
Story of the Glittering Plain, The, 

by William Morris, 39, 258, 259 
Story of the Sundering Flood, The, 

by William Morris, 39 
Strang, William, 290 
Street, G. S., 41. 46, 48, 68-69, 91. 

112, 144 
Strike at Arlingford, The, by 

George Moore, 209 
Strindberg, August, 210, 212 
Studio, The, 36, 93 
Study in Temptations, A, by John 

Oliver Hobbs, 224 
Sudermann, Hermann, 209-210 
Sullivan, E. J., 47, 280, 290 
Superman, 190 
Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 38, 

58, 74, 157, 160, 162 
Sydney Bulletin, The, 287 
Symbolist Movement in Literature, 

by Arthur Symons, 56 



INDEX 



303 



Symbolists, the, 59, 244 

Symonds, John Addington, 39, 262 

Symons, Arthur, 35, 36, 42, 47, 48, 

55-56, 70, 81, 85, gi, 95, 96-97. 

106, 112-114, 130, 134, 142, 159, 

161-162 
Synge, J. M., 42, 87 

Tables of the Law, The, by W. B. 

Yeats, 156 
Tabley, Lord de, 262 
Tales of Mean Streets, by Arthur 

Morrison, 43, 130, 216 
Tales of Unrest, by Joseph Con- 
rad, 225 
Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay, 31 
Temple Classics, 52 
Ten O'clock, by J. McNeill 

Whistler, 40, 123 
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 37, 100, 

128, 157, 220, 281 
Tess of the D'Urbervilles, by Thomas 

Hardy, 39, 40 
Testament of John Davidson, The, 

by John Davidson, 179- 181 
Testament of a Vivisector, The, by 

John Davidson, 179 
Thackeray, William Makepeace, 217 
The Testament of a Man Forbid, 

by John Davidson, 179, 189 
The Testament of an Empire Builder, 

by John Davidson, 179 
Theatrocrat, The, by John David- 
son, 179 
Theosophy, 149 
Theosophical movement, 132 
Thomas, Inigo, 284 
Thompson, Francis, 45, 51, 91, 131, 

158, 166-176 
Thompson, The Life of Francis, by 

Everard Meynell, 171 
Three Plays for Puritans, by Ber- 
nard Shaw, 195 
Thus Spake Zarathustra, by 

Friedrich Nietzsche, 129 
Time Machine, The, by H. G. 

Wells, 225 
Times, The, 34 
To-Day, 36, 47 
Todhunter, John, 209 
Tolstoy, Leo, 128, 203, 212, 250 
To-morrow, 36, 120 
" Tomlinson," by Rudyard Kip- 
ling 292 
Toulouse-Lautrec, 274 
Towards Democracy, by Edward 

Carpenter, 44 
Town planning, 254 
Townsend, F. H., 290 
Trades Unionism, The History of, by 
Sidney and Beatrice Webb, 44 



Traill, H. D., 21, 39, 227 

Tree, Herbert Beerbohm, 76, 210, 

211 
Trench, Herbert, 159 
Trilby, by George du Maurier, 39, 226 
Triumph of Mammon, The, by 

John Davidson, 179 
Tupper, Martin, 38 
Turgenev, 128, 132 
Twisting of the Rope, The, by 

Douglas Hyde, 149 
Two Essays on the Remnant, by 

John Eglington, 149 
Tyndall, John, 38 

Under the Deodars, by Rudyard 
Kipling, 232 

Under the Hill, by Aubrey Beards- 
ley, 50, 59, 63, 101-102, 114-115, 
138, 228 

Unhistorical Pastoral, An, by John 
Davidson, 178 

Unicorn Press, 45 

Unicorn, The, 118 

Unwin, Fisher, 45 

Upward, Allen, 40 

Vachell, H. a., 40 

Vale Press, 51, 255, 261-263, 281 

Vampire, The, by Rudyard Kipling, 

235 
Vanity, 118 
Vanity Fair, 217 
Vaughan, Henrj^ 166 
Vedrenne-Barker repertoire season, 

195. 214-215 
Vera : or the Nihilists, by Oscar 

Wilde, 75 
Verdigris, Baron, by Jocelyn Quilp, 

21 
Verhaeren, Emil, 50 
Verlaine, Paul, 50, 58, 61, 63, 135, 

274 
Victor Hugo, 57, 58 
Victoria, Queen, 237 
Vignettes, by Hubert Crackan- 

thorpe, 142 
Vistas, by William Sharp, 30 
Vizetelly, Ernest, 42 
Voltaire, 201 
Voysey, C. F. A., 251 
Voysey Inheritance, The, by Gran- 
ville Barker, 214 

Wagner, Richard, 198, 203 
Wagnerians, The, by Aubrey 

Beardsley, loi 
Walker, Emery, 251, 256-257, 266 
Walkley, A. B., 35, 206-207 
Wallace, Alfred Russel, 38 
Wallas, Graham, 26 



304 



INDEX 



Wanderings of Oisin, The, by W. B. 

Yeats, 148 
War of the Worlds, The, by H. G. 

Wells, 225 
Ward, Mrs Humphry, 26, 224 
Washer of the Ford, The, by " Fiona 

Macleod," 150 
Water of the Wondrous Isles, The, 

by William Morris, 39 
Watson, William, 34, 40, 46, 47, 

158. 163 
Watteau, 94, 100, 274 
Watts, George Frederick, 33, 99, 

268, 277 
Watts-Dunton, Theodore, 39 
Waugh, Arthur, 47, 218-220 
Webb, Beatrice, 44 
Webb, Sydney, 26, 44, 200 
Webb, Stephen, 251 
Wedmore, Frederick, 38, 39, 50, 224 
Wee Willie Winkie, by Rudyard 

Kipling, 232 
Well at the World's End, The, by 

William Morris, 39 
Wells, H. G., 27, 34, 35, 44. 224, 

225, 228-229, 274 
Welsh Literary Movement, 42 
Wessex Poems, by Thomas Hardy, 39 
Weyman, Stanley J., 40, 226 
What is Art ? by Leo Tolstoy, 250 
Wheeler & Co., A. H., 231 
Wheels of Chance, The, by H. G. 

Wells, 224 
When the Sleeper Wakes, by H. G. 

Wells, 225 
Whibley, Charles, 41 
Whistler, James McNeill, 34, 40, 47, 

74, 85, 98, 107, III, 123. 141, 143, 

220, 245, 270, 277, 287 
Whistler, The Life of James McNeill, 

by E. R. and J. Pennell. 98 
White Company, The, by A. Conan 

Doyle, 226 
Whiteing, Richard, 40, 43, 44. 224 
Whitman, Walt, 85 
Whitten, Wilfred, 169 
Whittingham, Charles, 255 
Widowers' Houses, by Bernard 

Shaw, 44, 194-196 
Wilde, Oscar, 21, 22, 25, 27-28, 34, 

45. 53-54. 58, 63, 66-68, 70, 72- 

90, 91, 98, 120-103, 105, 107-108, 

111-112, 114, 131-132, 134, 136- 

137. 138-139- 142. 143. 144-145. 
146, 195, 205-206, 210, 212, 228, 
244, 260, 263 
Wilde, Oscar, The Story of an 
Unhappy- Friendship, by R. H. 
Sherarc /2 



Wilson, Edgar, 36, 283 

Wilson, Henry, 251 

Wilson, Patten, 290 

Window in Thrums, A, by J. M. 

Barrie, 224 
Wolseley, Viscount, 237 
Woman and Her Son, A, by John 

Davidson, 189 
Woman Who Did, The, by Grant 

Allen, 40, 131, 216 
Woman Covered with Jewels, The, 

by Oscar Wilde, 76 
Woman of No Importance, A , by 

Oscar Wilde, 21, 76, 209, 212 
Woman's World, The, 74 
Women's Tragedies, by George 

Fleming, 144 
Wonderful Mission of Earl Lavender, 

The, by John Davidson, 179, 181 
Wonderful Visit, The, by H. G. 

Wells, 224 
Wood Beyond the World, The, by 

William Morris, 39 
Woods, Margaret L., 159 
Worde, Wenkyn de, 260-261 
Wordsworth, William, 58, 158, 174 
World, The, 193 
Wratislaw, Theodore, 48, 159 
Wreckage. By Hubert Crackan- 

thropc, 144 
Wrecker, The, by Lloyd Os- 

bourne and Robert Louis Steven- 
son, 225 

Yeats, Jack B., 283 

Yeats, R.H.A., J. B., 152 

Yeats, William Butler, 35, 42, 48, 

51, 56, 71, 141, 'J49, 150-156, 158, 

163-164, 283 
Yellow Aster, The, by Iota, 47, 139 
Yellow Book, The, 17, 23, 25, 34, 40, 

41, 45-46, 49, 52, 91, 93, 98, 118, 

139, 178, 186, 219, 228 
" Yellow, The Boom in," 46-47 
" Yellow Nineties," the, 34 
" Yellow Press," the, 23, 52 
Yet Again, by Max Beerbohm, 

120, 123 
You Never Can Tell, by Bernard 

Shaw, 194 

Zangwill, Israel, 35, 40, 211, 225, 
227 

Zola, Emile, 27, 42, 128, 130, 201, 
203, 216 

Zuleika Dobson. By Max Beer- 
bohm, 120, 123 



114.77-1 



J , 



